Hearnden Harrington and White duplication; how to merge?

Question

This is a particularly messy can of worms.   Hearnden, Herndon, and all its alternate spellings, are also cognates of Harrington, Herrington, Arrington, and so on.  

I am interested in Benjamin Hearnden, an early resident of Rhode Island.  Hearnden-25 is the guy, acknowledging a father named John Errington.  But then  you can find him, in much better form as Harrington-281, except that one is the son of a James Harrington.  Assuming these are the same men, start looking at their wives.  Elizabeth White was the daughter of a William White, not the guy on the Mayflower, but an even more interesting one, who was an alchemist.   Read about that at White-1947.  You'll see he has a couple daughters named Elizabeth who marries Benjamin Hearnden.  I bet between Hearnden, Herndon, Pray, and Harrington, there will be a half dozen dupes just for her.

I have been merging to try to clear up some of the gedcom messes right along, but I need some direction on this one.   Who determines what spelling of Harrington Herndon Hearnden etc is the right one?  What do you merge into?  If you don't, you will have many multiple runs for the same people, which I know is against our goal of one world tree.  But I have found every time I try to merge into a differently spelled last name, I don't have a choice which one is the merger and which is a mergee.  It complicates things.

Would appreciate some guidance before I make it worse than it is. Thank you.   Thank you,  Carolyn Adams

Comments

Hi Carol,

I joined wikitree a few weeks ago and ran into the same issue. What I've learned is that Benjamin Herendeen, Hearnden, etc. was born a Harrington, so he's listed as such. Harrington-281 should be the early resident of Rhode Island your looking for. The profile addresses the alternate colonial spellings. I read somewhere that he wasn't highly educated, so the different names may have been the result of him phonetically sounding out the name when signing documents?? His father was known as James and John.

Tim

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I know the easy answer is to say the right answer is the name he was born under, but it isn't that easy.  Spelling was not a big deal two centuries ago, and the earlier you go the more erratic it is.  While your preference, being a Harrington, may be to make them all Harringtons, this will come as a shock to all the Herndons who've had some alternate spelling for eight generations. I am unwilling to foist my opinion into the pot.  This has to be a group think thing, not any of our particular biases.  It was Harrington in my line too, which is a New England line.  Southerners tend to go the Herndon, Hearnden, etc route.  It is the way they pronounced it.

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Yeah I hear what your saying, It's not that easy. Ideally you know when the Harrington became Herendeen (like with Benjamin) In my case Herendeen started with Benjamin then stayed Herendeen for 4 generations before switching back to Harrington. (not sure why yet) Once I knew that I discovered a lot of missing data. Benjamin was born a Harrington in England, Lots of research has him as Herendeen which is also correct because that's the name he assumed in America. I've been using the alternate name section in my tree to account for this.  My third great grandfather was Herendeen, but I have him as Harrington in my tree with Herendeen being his alternate name. I'm 100% certain that Harrington-281 is the original Benjamin that arrived as a child in 1630. He had a son and some  grandsons also named Benjamin.

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Somewhere, recently, I read that RI was originally part of Virginia. Is that true? If so, it might account for some of the confusion. I've traced 'my' Herndons back to Thomas M. in Missouri, who claims to be from Virginia on censuses, as does his son, John B., but I can not fit him into any of the families I've seen claiming him. (There is also a Thomas Mann and his son, John Benjamin, who are reportedly in Missouri at the same time, but are decidedly not 'my' Thomas and John.)

The families in Virginia all seem to spell their names closer to "Herndon" and migrated south through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas. I believe Benjamin 'Harrington' had family stay in RI and some go to NY, and they're claimed to be closer to "Harrington" in spelling and pronunciation.

I'm inclined to believe Benjamin in Rhode Island is a Harrington and the 'Herndon' spelling was introduced into records by a clerk who was familiar with the Herndon name from further south. I'm also not a linguist, but the short a in Harrington seems harder to spell phonetically with Herndon's short u sound. I can definitely see the 'rrington' sounding like 'rndon' but the vowel change doesn't fit for me. I generally treat them as different families, but I may look for a link, to see if we might be linked to Benjamin rather than the Virginia Herndons.

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Providence and the Rhode Island Plantations, the original name of the colony, was never a part of the Virginia colony.

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Later generations did bastardize the more familiar name of Harrington, however they often used the spelling herrington. You have to be careful researching these lines as Harrington or you will go down some wrong holes. Best to leave them closest to the original name Harnden or when Benjamin ran away from his trouble in Massachusetts to Providence with his brother, they often used the name Hearnden.

Their brother Richard and the rest of our lines still use Harnden. We are the founding fathers of Wilmington, Massachusetts.

The three brothers father is likely John Harnden. Better known as a gentleman of London. He had a small roll to play in assisting a chief back to health. Some used to say that was likely John Hamden however after discussing the facts with the Hamden historical society in England, we agree it was not.

I do have all the migrations early and late of the Harnden lines documented up to the 1920s. Many to present day. However, work does need to be done on the Hearnden lines that broke off and went to Rhode Island. Much of the surname daughtered out in those lines...

Answer 1

Hi Carolyn.  The rule is whatever the correct Last Name at Birth is the profile you want to merge into.  I had some instances where more than one last name was used multiple times in court docs (no birth records available).

My solution was to set up a discrepancy area with aka Last name variations; i.e., Dunkin, Duncan, Duncanne, etc., I also used aka's in the "Other Last Names" field in the profile for ease of searching; i.e., Burnside, Byrnside.

My guess would be that your Benjamin Hearnden family probably became a Herndon later on.

Comments

P.S.  Try using the "Merge Tool" where you put in the ID's  The first box is the Merge (2nd box) is the Merge Into.

Just to clarify --  When you propose a merge of two people with the same LNAB, the system doesn't care which direction it is proposed in.  When someone goes to complete the merge, the system forces them to do it in the correct direction.  This is nothing to worry about.

The other situation is where you have two different LNABs.  Could be a spelling variation, or one is simply wrong.  In that case, you really should propose the merge into the one with the "correct" name (assuming you know!).  Unlike identical LNABs, if the LNAB differs, the person completing the merge can reverse the direction

Answer 2

This reads an awful lot like family-book fiction.

My first problem is that George Fox started preaching in 1647 and the first Quakers arrived in America in 1656.  So the Quaker family bit doesn't work.

My next problem is this wicked uncle, who seems to be a mystery.

My next problem is that Benjamin isn't recognised as a gateway ancestor by the experts, although the Earls of Lincoln certainly had the ancestry.

I think he or his mother is in the sights of the Questionable Gateway project and I'd say leave it to them.  I doubt if the Hearnden - Harrington thing is going to stand up.  There were Hearndens in England, who weren't Harringtons.

PS Of course he comes under the PGM project as well.

Comments

If still unsure, there is a video on You Tube that may help.

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@RJ: Your answer is very insightful, but I switched the "best" to Sandy's because she was addressing the issues in the original post about how to choose which last name, etc etc ... but your ability to recognize the subtleties in a situation like this always impresses me. If I could go back in time and tell my high school-aged self to pay attention in history class, I would. Then I could keep up with the likes of you!

@Carolyn: The leaders at the PGM (Puritan Great Migration) can help with protecting the name of this profile. Project Protection will make sure that if subsequent duplicates are identified/created, they can only be merged into the correct last name once it's decided which variation is correct.

The "Questionable Gateway Ancestors" that RJ is referring to is a sub-project/category of the Magna Carta Project. Either of those links will get you connected with people who can help you out with this issue.

And just for good measure, here are links to the help pages for Name Fields and Merging.