Because of naming patterns and patronymics, four generations of one of my family contains numerous male family members whose first names are either Lubbe, Habbe, or Pabe and whose last names are either Lubben, Habben, or Paben. It can be extremely confusing and they are easy to either mix up or merge into one wrong compilation.
Church records for the area of Germany where this family is from are fairly extant. For this reason, I have avoided using online trees and compilations unless I have personal knowledge of the researcher’s ability to be thorough and meticulous. Even then anyone can make a mistake. Using the church records myself is an excellent way to go although it is tedious and time consuming.
I’ve made a chart listing the family members showing their relationship to the others. This chart includes parent child relationships (using lines); years of birth, death, and marriage; and abbreviations for locations of those events. An alphabetical list of members of the family is also helpful as is an alphabetical list of spouses.
One response
I envy anyone who knows the German location of anything that happened in their family. And then, to find anything pertaining to that particular family… Is Wilhelm Frederich Johan the same person as Frederich Wilhelm Johan? Probably not. Or possibly? If it weren’t for the names Wilhelm, Frederich, and Johan, none of my ancestors would have a name. And then once they got over here – just use whichever name struck their fancy on any given census. Who knew Charles and John were the same person.