The Spring Name Study celebrates its second birthday on Monday. It's great to reflect and to see that the study has come such a long way in such a short time.
From fewer than 600 Springs on Wikitree in February 2017, today there are more than 6,200
There were less than 600 Spring profiles on Wikitree when I joined the site in February 2017.
By the end of 2017, I had something of an unofficial name study underway. That is to say, I was researching Springs with no known relation to me, but my research was focused almost exclusively on Australian Springs. Today, Wikitree+ shows there are around 1380 Australian Spring profiles (calculated by using the search term "Spring Australia").
At the time the Spring Name Study was launched in May 2018, there were still fewer than 2000 Spring profiles on Wikitree. In the study's first year, the Spring footprint experienced incredible growth on Wikitree. By May 2019, there were profiles for more than 5,300 Springs. Today, there are almost 1,000 more Springs on Wikitree than there were a year ago.
A large majority of Spring profiles are of high quality, thanks to the Spring Name Study. Generally, Spring profiles include:
- good source citations, embedded as inline references (footnotes)
- biographies with key details on life events such as birth/baptism, marriage, death/burial, as well as information about careers or vocations, where these can be found
- appropriate categories
- connections to the Global Tree (only 719 Spring profiles are currently unconnected)
The Spring Name Study is seeking to categorise all Springs into patriarchal groups
Right now, there are 99 patriarchal groups into which we have sorted around 4,870 Springs: I think it's pretty amazing that nearly 80% of all the Springs on Wikitree have been sorted.
- The largest group (called Group 9 on Wikitree) currently comprises 944 Springs all descended from John Spring (1589?–1659?), who migrated from England to Massachusetts during the Puritan Great Migration.
- The patriarch in my Spring group (Group 1) is William Spring, an Irishman and my third great grandfather. At least three of William's children, including my ancestor William Spring (1843–1935), migrated to Australia in the wake of the Irish Potato Famine.
- One Spring group (Group 50) comprises many Native American people descended from German/Swiss-born Christopher Columbus Spring (1800?–1860). Christopher migrated to the United States from Europe and his partner in the new world, Susan Sophia Bohannon, was a member of the Choctaw tribe. Susan and Christopher's children were Choctaw and named Spring.
Undoubtedly, some of the 99 Spring groups will be able to be merged in the future.
The Spring Name Study has a bright future
I strongly believe that the Spring Name Study will continue to grow and improve. But, it's only with the help of Wikitreers that the Spring footprint will continue to grow on Wikitree.
If you would like to collaborate on Spring profiles, or if you have information on a Spring that you would like my help to research further, please contact me or post on G2G. It would be great to hear from you!
