Yes - and having finally separated them, rest assured that each will be getting assigned (more) unique attributes pronto. Your remark about backing up is duly noted. Will now be hypersensitive about it when approaching a database task such as the one I undertook. Experience, once again, proves a valuable teacher…
You should never consider putting incorrect data into your database, and as for what county clerks did, in my 40 years of staring at census and deeds, never have I seen such a case. I am willing to bet that was not a common occurrence in any jurisdiction.
I have seen county level records identify an older man as Sr. and a younger man as as Jr. to distinguish their records, even if the two men were not related. So I agree that this sometimes happened. But I would quibble with the idea that it was a common practice or a standard practice. I have seen vastly more contrary cases where identically named men had no further designation than their names, whether they were related or not and sometimes even if they were father and son. I have a fourth great grandfather named William Cross who was the son of a William Cross, and no record for either man used the Sr. or Jr. designation.
So when this sort of thing happened for men who were not father and son, I think it was just the county court clerk being creative rather than the county court clerk following a standard practice. When I have seen this happen, I have chosen to treat the Sr. and Jr. designations as meaning simply “the elder” and “the younger” without there necessarily being any meaning of family relation.
An amusing example of distinguishing men with the same name occurred with my Underwood family in Sevier County, Tennessee where there were many, many men named John Underwood. Sometimes the duplicate names in records for John Underwood represented fathers and sons or first cousins or uncles and nephews, etc. but many times the duplicate names were just duplicate. But in any case, I did find one tax record for “John Underwood the redhead”. Unfortunately, I have no idea which of the John Underwoods was the one with red hair.
Another strange one is the family bible of Allen S. Bryan Sr. There was a daughter named Elizabeth Bryan who died. Subsequently, a second daughter was born named Elizabeth, and they listed her in the family Bible as Elizabeth Bryan Jr.
The examples of ways to treat identically named men are just that – some different ways the OP could designate an easy to see difference between the 2 guys ( and she did figure out a way) …
I have seen on here ( and other places), where some people have said that instead of using UNKNOWN for the maiden surname of a married woman, they will instead use the women’s married name ( until they find the given name)-- I would NOT do that as I have too many couples that actually do have the same last surnames BUT I also would NOT tell them to do so is adding incorrect info…
As for my two Issac Greens, it would NOT be INCORRECT to list them as Sr and Jr because over 80 % of the documents found for them
( and we have a LOT) in different places at different times use Sr and Jr as in this example
and Isaac Jr was actually a Jr-- his father Isaac Sr died ( before 1809) when Isaac Jr was in his early teens…
RIN numbers are great when you are trying to figure out if you have confused two different people with the same name or if you have listed the same person twice BUT they are NOT really useful if you have 15 men named Francis Marion Bassett born in 5 adjacent counties–all born within 1 year of each other-- you need a easier way to tell them apart…
Was the use of Sr and Jr for men not related a Standard practice or something required by county officials ? NO BUT I have found it in many different counties in different state-- even in different centuries-- did it always happen --NO but it may be more common than you think BECAUSE you didn’t have 2 Jacob Garths born 1782 in the same county in MD with 3 more born within a 2 year period in the same county that you were trying to sort out or you were trying to sort 2 Abraham Cobbler --both born the same year in the same county-- both with a wife named Mary-- both with kids-- both of them having a boy named John and a dau named Lavenia-- both who died 9 months apart in the same county ( before 1850) or perhaps you just never noticed as they were NOT the families you were looking for…
Most of the records BUT not all I have found with Sr and Jr for unrelated men are BEFORE 1850 and unfortunately the men died BEFORE 1850-- I have learned to check everybody in a county and adjacent counties in these early records for a specific person as there MIGHT have been more than 1 or the ancestor you are looking for was in this county in 1820 then the county lines changed and he is now in another county in 1830
I have 2 families in England that are kind of strange also-- the first family had 2 kids born before 1800-- both boys died, so they used the same names on the next 2 boys…
2nd family-- named 1st James-- he died so named 2nd son James-- a few year later they had another son that they named James-- so YES 2 sons named James at the same time-- son 2 dies-- so abt 5 years later they have another son that they named James-- ( again 2 at same time)-- son 3 died BUT son 4 lived to be an old man-- funny thing is that I can NOT find any ancestor for either parent with the name James…
And yes-- I have marriage info in England where the witness was listed as Elizabeth Harvey Sr
I don’t care what they are. Unless you plan to immediately clean up the bad data, it should not be done. Color coding could have worked just as well.
Again, garbage data. UNKNOWN is garbage and can (and will) cause issues if one is interfacing with places such as Ancestry. Putting a married name at least has a basis in reality. While not the most optimal, the woman likely did use that name for some period of time in her life. She most certainly did not sign documents as ‘Jane UNKNOWN’.
It would not be incorrect if they were father and son.
I have worked with more than a few DBAs that would literally have a meltdown to see anyone dumping garbage into their precious DBs.
No, I didn’t have two Jacob Garths or Adam Cobblers or whatever. However I did have Funk groups where Christian, Jacob, John and Henry were quite commonly used across the various families. The folks were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Iowa in time ranging from the 1780’s to today. Many were prolific land buyers and sellers and as such there were numerous legal documents generated and in no instances was there a Jr/Sr case except in situations where it was actually appropriate.
I also have Schildt/Shiltz/Shilts familes where Mathias, Jacob and several other names were used and often in small geographic areas in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, West Virginia and several western states ranging from post revolutionary war until the 1930s. Again, the only real existence of Jr/Sr were in cases completely justified based on blood ties.
I have been doing genealogy for 40 years now. At least 20 years of it has involved heavily digging into land records such as deeds, mortgages and such. Over the 40 years I have launched assaults on BMD records, as well as various court records, at over 100 brick and mortar courthouses and now many more online. Again, the Jr/Sr issue has never reared its ugly head.
As for checking out men in a geographic area with same names, isn’t that the ‘proper’ way of working through these situations? I could swear that I have seen more than a few webinars/Youtubes by self professed experts that advise you do just that when you are doing reasonably exhaustive research.