Remote Relatives or Random Matches

In Ysearch my top matches are almost always Greater Germania or British Isles. So I see Danes and Swedes and Germans as well as a few Irish, Brits and even names normally associated with Wales. Just looking at the top matches.

If I take those top matches and compare them to my top matches as Ancestry.com and Genebase and Genetree many of them repeat, but definitely the areas repeat. I have some generally Norse/Germanic people and a few Isles scattered around.

Many of them have patronymic names like mine. I have Peterson, Corson, Edwardson, Janke (like Johnson), Johannson and Thomas. The Thomas is especially interesting because it's a root Thom name and the closest to Thompson I come across. Also, like Edwardson, it's classified as "Welsh". Peterson and Corson are Scandinavian and Janke is German/Pomeranian. I have a few close town names like Graham and Knowlton. I also have some unknowns like Jost, Heemsoth, Knigge, Custy, Coen and Findlay. Custy and Coen are Irish and Findlay is Scottish. Heemsoth, Jost and Knigge are all German.

The Knowltons have always been the top of the list but, at this point in time, it appears that I have more markers in common with the Corsons who I haven't looked at in any great detail.

Like the Knowltons they have a bit of a mystery. They don't know what their founding member was doing in New Amsterdam. He wasn't dutch, the researchers believe he was Scandinavian his name was Carston Jansen. His sons were Carstonsons which was shortened to Corson. Carston Jansen lived under English rule for 36 or more years and seems to have been involved in local English families more than local Dutch population as his sons have English names.

All of this is not to say that we are Corsons, but to illustrate that we appear to have a lot in common with those who follow Scandinavian patronymic naming conventions and that even as close as the 1700s in America patronymic names were not fixed.

Like Thompson, Corson is also seen as a Scottish name and there are many Scottish Corsons but in the case of this family who share many of my genetic markers, a scandinavian name can and will easilly pass for British Isles.

What's in a Name?

In my Ancestry.com hunt for Levi Thompson, I've rarely come across a record where he is indexed as Levi Thompson. In fact I've come across a lot of Thompsons that are not listed as "Thompson". My own Thompsons are listed as Thompon and Thampson and Levi is often indexed as Lin. So if you're looking for Levi Thompson you may not readily find the real record indexed as Lin Thompon.

Census takers did their best to spell names and handwriting is easily misinterpreted. A person with an accent my sound like they're saying Thampson or Thampsen. Also it appears that Thampson and Thompon are both actual names.

So when I'm looking for Thompsons I have to also look for Thampsons, Thompons, Thomsens, Thompsens, Thomassons, Thomsons and Hampsons. Because a handwritten Th looks a lot like an H.

I should also note that it wasn't me who caught the record for Thampson and Thompon and corrected it. It was some other nice person. One excellent thing about Ancestry.com is that they let you suggest alternates for names right there when you're reading the census. Someone else found my Levi Thompson in the Lin Thompon and corrected it.

Now I try to do the same for others I find. There are so many ways one might spell Fenimore!