Don't be careless with identity

Names are important to all of us. In a technology-dependent society, we all live with the fear of identity theft — someone taking our names and doing assorted things pretending to be us.

Each of us would like to keep our names clean and unsullied. And none of us wants to be confused with someone of the same name who has a less-than-sterling reputation.

So what makes our ancestors so different? Well, nothing, really. They probably cared about their identities as much as we do today — but we descendants often don't do right by our forefathers. We mix and match them with seeming disregard for who they really were.

The result is that we have the wrong people taking space on family pedigree charts. Some men and women in our charts actually are fictitious persons we've created by melding assorted information to create people who never even existed.

Sorting out people with the same name sometimes can be as simple as using the old noggin with a healthy dose of common sense. For example, a Thomas Dawsey born in 1765 is not the father of a James Dawsey born in 1770. No matter how sure you are that James' father was a Thomas, there is no way he was 5 years old when James was born. Yet with hardly any effort you can find numerous examples of this in family trees posted throughout the Internet.

One thing that contributes to this name crisis is that our ancestors were almost religious in paying homage to their parents. For example, a George Dawsey who had five sons. Each of them named his first male child "George Dawsey." So within the next 18 years, all five of those George Dawseys will be about the same age and will begin to create similar records.

It will take a near-miracle — or at least some hardnosed, dedicated genealogists — to prove which of George Dawsey's grandsons belongs to which of George Dawsey's sons.

We have five George Dawseys, all first cousins, all living in the same community, all the same general age and creating similar records at the same time. Suppose a George Dawsey was elected sheriff in 1858. A George Dawsey served on the local city council in 1860. Two George Dawseys enlisted in the Confederate Army. A George Dawsey married Mary Harrison in 1863. Still another married Louisa Stewart in 1866. Were all these events the activities of one George Dawsey, or were several different Georges at work here?

There are ways to weed through situations such as this. A key element is that you must conduct exhaustive research for the time and place your ancestor lived.

This boils down to knowing the community, being familiar with its historic timeline and understanding the significance of events that took place there. Our ancestors, their family members and associates all probably created documents that could provide unique identifiers for different men with the same name, eliminating all possible conflicts. An exhaustive search doesn't mean just checking censuses and whatever databases you find on Ancestry.com or other Internet offerings. It means digging long and deep into every extant record for an area.

And while you're dealing with this dilemma, ask yourself how many ways you can misspell the Dawsey name. Records with names of Dosey, Dausey, Dossie, Dorsoey, and Darsey may be the same family, so check them all!

Those who want to learn more about the JewishGen website will want to attend the Oct. 9 meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Tampa Bay.

The group will meet at 2 p.m. at Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services, 14041 Icot Blvd., Clearwater.

Clint Elbow will talk about the website www.jewishgen.org, which provides access to 20 million genealogical records and links to hundreds of related websites. Jewish researchers generally consider this site the beginning point for researching ancestors of Jewish heritage.

Individuals are encouraged to bring laptop computers to this session to access JewishGen and follow along during a question and answer session.

 For information on the organization or directions to the meeting, call Sally Israel at 727-343-1652.