Beckett One-Name Study

Profile managers: One Name Studies WikiTree [send private message] and David Bicket [send private message]

About the Project

The Beckett/Becket/Bickett/Bicket One-Name Study project serves as a collaborative platform to collect information on the Beckett name and its variants. The hope is that other researchers like you will join the study to help make it a valuable reference point for other genealogists who are researching or have an interest in the Beckett and variant names.

As a One Name Study, this project is not limited to persons who are related biologically. Individual studies can be used to branch out the research into specific methods and areas of interest, such as geographically (England Becketts), by time period (18th Century Becketts), or by topic (Beckett DNA, Beckett Occupations, Beckett Statistics).

How to Join

To join the Beckett/Becket/Bickett/Bicket Name Study, first start out by browsing our current research pages to see if there is a specific study ongoing that fits your interests. If so, feel free to add your name to the Membership list below, post an introduction comment on the specific team page, and then dive right in!

If a research page does not yet exist for your particular area of interest, please contact the Name Study Coordinator: David Bicket for assistance.

... ... ... is a member of the Beckett Name Study Project.

Once you are ready to go, you can also show your project affiliation with the ONS Member Sticker:

Research Pages

These research pages cover two major projects which are part of the BECKET(T)/BICKET(T) One-Name Study. These are: (1) The Scotland OPR Downloads Project; and (2) The BECKET(T)/BICKET(T) Branches Project

(1) The Scotland OPR Downloads Project

The work that Jim Beckett (1009J branch) has done by downloading and transcribing pre-1855 OPR records from Scotland is now available for anyone to use. If there were any members of your branch who were in Scotland during this time, you might wish to check it out. In many cases the transcriptions of the original records add significant additional information compared to what is available on the main genealogical websites. Jim has also identified (and included) records for many variant/deviant surname spellings which might otherwise be hard to find, but for people who are often clearly part of our branches there. See [1].

(2) The BECKET(T)/BICKET(T) Branches Project

We have started a major project (1) to identify, worldwide, all branches of BECKETs, BECKETTs, BICKETs, and BICKETTs, (2) to determine the most credible lineage for each branch, and (3) to determine the genetic links between those branches using Y-DNA to the extent possible. Improving the credibility of lineages also means that we need to get rid of existing lineage errors.

To give some perspective on this project, the following are the top level statistics as of early February 2024:

– Approx 150 branches which probably originate in England, possibly related to Thomas à Becket of Canterbury

– Approximately 30 branches which definitely originate in Ayrshire (based on Y-DNA SNP testing), although many historically pass through England and the north of Ireland

– Over 20 branches of Black Becketts which are likely descended from previously enslaved individuals, with the assumption that they had been enslaved by members of the above trees.

The main resources for this project are the Branch Index and Person Index spreadsheets. They can be downloaded using the following links:

Link to current version of Branch Index Spreadsheet: [2]

Link to current version of the Person Index Spreadsheet: [3]

We have had a couple of cases where people have not been able to access project resources, and the spreadsheets in particular. We are still trying to understand and resolve these issues. Please let us know if you have this issue. (Contact via a private message to the profile manager at the top of this page).

If you don’t know what branch you are in, then start with the Person Index, to look up someone in your branch who is no longer alive, and find out which branch they are in. Note that the Person Index is manually maintained, so it will not include everyone we have in every branch. So you may need to check several different people to find your branch. If you cannot find anyone you check for, please let us know what you can about your branch, and we will check it ourselves. Although we have hundreds of branches, it is likely that there are more, so we would appreciate your contacting us. We may also be able to find your connection because you may represent an unknown sub-branch of an existing branch.

Once you know your branch, whether from the Person Index, or from other sources (see below), then you should use the Branch Index. This will give you links to the latest lineages we have for your branch on several different platforms. It may also provide you with a link to a ‘Branch Summary’ for the branch, and to challenges to the principle different lineages we know about. (All of these continue to be developed.) The Branch Index is our main working document, as we work to clean up the different lineages, and furthermore to connect them, both in historical records and by using Y-DNA.

You may also know your branch ID through being told by others, e.g., by the main genealogists for your branch. We will also be contacting the managers of lineages we find on public websites, to let them know of this opportunity to learn more about their own lineages, and to help determine the most accurate versions available.

Project Explanation

We are starting with lineages we have created ourselves or have found, e.g., on the internet. We know that many of these lineages, especially those from the internet created with the help of ‘hints’, contain major errors, especially for data from the 1800s and before. Consequently, we know that we will need to weed out such errors over time as challenges are made to these lineages. The intention is that, over time, at least one lineage for each branch will become the most authoritative version available on the internet. Furthermore, many of the errors in alternative lineages will be clearly documented as being incorrect, and why.

It may be helpful to understand why we are doing this project separately from sites such as the Family Search Family Tree and WikiTree, which in principle require good source documentation and therefore should already be sufficiently reliable. Our reasons are as follows:

(1) We recognize that competent branch lineages have been developed on many different platforms already. For us to insist on just one platform would mean losing access to those other lineages, and their associated lineage managers. Instead, we will identify when a lineage is documented on multiple platforms, and highlight the one we consider the most credible. We also recognize the even Family Search Family Tree and WikiTree suffer from incorrect linkages and conflation of individuals, so no platform is intrinsically fully reliable.

(2) Pragmatically, there are too many existing BECKET, BECKETT, BICKET, and BICKETT lineages on different platforms for us to try to recreate them all on a single platform. We don’t have the capacity to do that.

(3) We are trying to connect branches genetically using Y-DNA, and not just with historical records. Our approach facilitates showing genetic connections in a way not provided by any existing platform.

We ask anyone using the lineages and data from this project to:

Let us know if you challenge any data in our lineages. We will make those challenges publicly available, and subsequently try to assess the validity of competing assertions. We will document our conclusions for everyone to see. Others may likewise provide their own assessments of the competing assertions. We may have to say that some assertions are not supported, but likewise not disproven. In cases where assertions are not supported, we may split the lineages, with comments in each resulting lineage about the split.

Provide us with additional lineages, or additions to existing lineages. (Please provide these in Gedcom format.) We will assess the information provided, and incorporate it into our lineages as appropriate.

We will acknowledge the source of contributions and challenges. Furthermore, if you would like to be named as the main genealogist for any specific branch, please also let us know.

Related Surnames and Surname Variants

• Becket
• Bicket
• Bickett
• Bichan

Task List

1. Our current project to to work on identifying, cleaning, and consolidating the hundreds of Becket(t) and Bicket(t) branches which we have identified. See the research section above.