What's In A Name?
- Leslie Ryan
- Dec 3, 2025
- 2 min read
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” A quote from Shakespeare's Juliet about Romeo having the wrong last name for her family. To her, names were not important. Genealogy is ALL about names & dates!
Hello, fellow genealogists and family history fans! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! After the big cleanup and before making a new mess decorating for , I took some time to look at some of my brick walls, and I found a surprise relative in an online tree!
My Carroll family is stuck at patriarch James born in 1796 in Maryland, died 1858 in Illinois. His oldest son, William, my second great grand uncle, lost his wife to typhoid fever in 1860. I knew they had 2 daughters born between the 1850 and 1860 census, but he was on that census alone, and he disappeared from records after registering for the Draft in 1863.
Hints about William and a SON named "Rdwin" popped up from FindAGrave, and also a Death Record from Oregon. These are the right parents! He must have been sent off to live with other relatives like his sisters after their mother died.
The FindAGrave record is problematic. It's not my William. He was also born in Ohio in 1823, but this one has an earlier marriage to a different woman and many more children. So, that hint is being IGNORED, and his fate remains a mystery.
I have had this issue of too many Carrolls in Ohio at the same time before! There were two James Carrolls, born in 1796 in Pennsylvania, living in Licking or Hocking counties in Ohio, and they both died in Illinois.
I had been delighted to find this photo until I determined this was the OTHER James Carroll.
The moral here, friends, remains, don't just copy trees, or pictures without doing the research! If we publish a tree we should be as accurate as possible as family HISTORIANS, right? What's in a name? Noting if the data doesn't match up!
Blessings of the Holiday Season to all of you! If you'd like some help with your brick walls even just getting started, send me an email for a FREE review of your family.
Regards,
Leslie Ryan
