When writing an article about Arvin Butler and Jacob Baker, I kept mixing up the last names of Butler and Baker when writing about the two men. The same thing could have happened to an informant on a death certificate or other record. If the last names were similar or if the person just “got them in their head wrong,” a mix up could have been the result.
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Confusing names led me to discovering my 4X great-grandfather. Way back when I was brand new to genealogy, I would look up different names from different sides of the family, just trying to find anything on them. One day I looked up Andrew Bell and didn’t find anything I hadn’t already found, so I switched to Harvey Cruikshank, another great-grandfather. Only once I had hit enter, I realized that I had forgotten to change the first name from Andrew to Harvey. A man named Andrew Cruikshank popped up, and with more research, I discovered he was Harvey’s great-grandfather! I would never have found him had I not been wildly jumping back and forth; which I know now we not supposed to do–but it worked for me!