How to attribute death records when multiple people have the same name?

Question

Does anyone know of any approaches to link a specific person to a death record (which has only name, date and place) when there are multiple people with the same name living in the area?

Specifically, I've been working on a few families in Gloucestershire from ~1750-1850 and am often finding several people with the same name in the same town having died within the timeframe of the person I'm researching.

Comments

Thanks everyone, this is all very useful advice for a relative newcomer to genealogy.

Answer 1

Where I do my research, in Sweden, there is an abundance of same-name people, even same-name people who do not just live in the same parish but also in the same village. There's a wide variation in the information included in death book entries. When we are lucky there are long obits, mentioning birth date, parents and marriages. In later times, say from 1800, there is almost always a birth date as identifier.

But of course there are also cases like what you are describing, where you just don't know by looking at the death record which one of your Anders Larssons it belongs to. Then there's really nothing for it but to research them all. Well, I find that it usually boils down to two eminently confusable individuals - where the one with the most genealogists among his descendants will have been assigned the easiest-to find death date. Not always correctly.

Working on families, as you are doing, must be the way to go - piecing together all the relevant information. Like: did one of them actually die in infancy? Or did one of them have children well after the death date in question?

Answer 2

I have been able to determine which person belongs to which death date by reading wills and probate documents, of course that depends on being able to find them and there being said documents to begin with. Or look at gravestones, if they exist. Husbands and wives are usually buried next to each other and sometimes share the same stone, so assuming that wives have different names that might give you a clue.

Comments

Wills etc. are excellent, of course. I keep forgetting about them because there usually aren't any where I'm usually digging.

Answer 3

The ones who died in or after 1837 can be looked up on the GRO website, https://www.gro.gov.uk. They have age at death in years recorded, but beware some infant deaths have been entered wrongly (they put everything in as years when some of them were months, weeks, days or hours old at death). For the rest, you will need to find another source, such as a will or probate. Sometimes records for the spouse can narrow it down, eg if a person remarries. The fact he/she remarried will make it most probable the spouse died, as most people did not divorce. It's not absolute proof though. Newspapers can also be helpful. Then there are gravestones, try looking on Findagrave, Billion Graves or even going to a graveyard, if you know which one the person/people you are interested in are buried in and you can get there. I did this recently. I took pictures with my phone of stones that I could barely read and when I put the pics on my pc, was able to see the wording clearly. I'm sure there are other ways but these are the ones I can think of right now.

Answer 4

Both mine and my husbands families lived in rural areas close to other, often related, people of the same name. I have found that that the only answer is to try to reconstitute whole families rather than concentrating on one individual line. (I find it more interesting anyway)

It's also important to see the original parish registers  or  fuller transcriptions such as on Freereg, rather than  simple indexes which just give the name and the place. The original entry may include phrases such as 'widow of' or the person's occupation, age or the name of the street or hamlet the person was living in. (Burial registers post 1812 include residence and age )

Comments

I agree on the filling out of full families, it's very rewarding as you get such a better picture of how life was for them.