ok so my mom got really into ancestry.com over christmas and she found a Thomas Johnson in our family tree from like 1840s Virginia. apparently he was a blacksmith and owned a small shop near Richmond. theres even a census record with his name on it. kinda wild seeing your exact name on a document from almost 200 years ago. anyone else found historical relatives with the same name? i feel like with a name this common theres gotta be a bunch of us with ancestors named Thomas Johnson too
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That's really cool! I did something similar a few years back and found THREE Thomas Johnsons in my family tree across different generations. Apparently my great great great grandfather was Thomas, his son was Thomas, and his grandson was Thomas. Zero creativity in the naming department but I guess I can't complain since my parents did the same thing to me lol
three in a row?? thats actually amazing. like a dynasty of Thomas Johnsons. i wonder how far back it goes
i tried ancestry once and gave up because there were literally hundreds of Thomas Johnsons in the database and i couldnt figure out which ones were actually related to me. the search results were just pages and pages of the same name. eventually my wife said i was "obsessing" and i should come eat dinner so i closed the laptop and never went back
Pro tip from someone who does this professionally - use location and date filters aggressively when searching common names. Also cross reference with other family members in the same household on census records. A Thomas Johnson alone is impossible to track but a Thomas Johnson living with a Martha Johnson and kids named William and Sarah in a specific county? Much easier to confirm. Good luck with your research!
oh wow thats actually super helpful. i think there was a Martha on the census record too!! gonna check tonight
seconding this advice. the household context is everything when youre dealing with common names. also church records if you can find them, they often have more detail than government docs
My grandpa always told us we were related to the Thomas Johnson who was governor of maryland. I believed him until i was like 25 and actually looked it up. Turns out our branch of Johnsons came from Ireland in the 1890s so... no connection at all. Grandpa was a great storyteller tho ill give him that