Name Twin Alert

 

Stumbling across the possibility that there might be more than one person by the same name in the same town can become a wake up call to researchers to proceed carefully. Especially when those name twins also were born about the same year, there's always the possibility that the research path might inadvertently lead up the wrong ancestral path.

I can't even remember the first time I encountered such name twins. It was years ago, but I do remember that they turned out to be cousins, born a couple years apart—but the wiggle room built into birth estimates on decennial census records didn't help. I learned to tread carefully when stepping backwards in time on the trail of my forebears when spotting a name twin alert.

In this week's case of pursuing a First Families line for our local genealogical society, I once again encountered name twins. In the Nevin family, migrating from Linn County, Iowa, westward after the California Gold Rush, were two brothers and their families. The one brother—Alexander—we have already discussed, along with his son Nathan (or Nate, as a county history book identified him during his years as county treasurer).

I had found both of them, father and son, listed in California's Great Register for the year 1867. If I had looked farther, I would have spared myself the puzzle of sorting out two men by the name of Nathan Nevin.

Though I had spotted newspaper entries which puzzled me about differing dates and locations for Nathan Nevin's death, it wasn't until I ran across a Find A Grave volunteer's explanation posted at Alexander Nevin's memorial that I found the details to help clarify the connections. There, a volunteer had noted that Alexander had traveled to California with his brother John. Could John have also named a son Nathan?  

On the same page in the book I found cataloguing registered voters for San Joaquin County, sixty one year old Alexander Nevin was named, along with sixty three year old John Nevin. Both of them reported that they had been born in Pennsylvania, and were now living in Elk Horn Township. 

But there's more. That same page in 1867 also contained the entry for thirty two year old Nathan Nevin, born in Ohio. And not much farther down the page, another entry for a Nathan Nevin, age thirty two and born in Ohio. Thankfully, that second Nathan Nevin included his middle name—listed in the register as Deny—to help differentiate the two men of the same age and possessed of the same name.

Not content to rely solely on that one document, you know I had to look further for how they connected. Rewinding history to his 1860 census entry back in Linn County, I found the faint entry for Nathan Nevin and his wife Margaret—listed in that enumeration by her initials, M. M.—whereas Alexander's son Nathan had been listed in a different town in Linn County along with his wife Mary and son Alexander.

Following through on census entries before and after that point, it was quite clear these were two different men—and that I had sorted their relationships correctly. In the end, the 1901 obituary for Nathan D. Nevin, published in the Stockton Evening Mail, despite his move by 1880 to a different county, clarified that he was indeed cousin of Alexander's son Nathan—causing me to wonder why the name Nathan might have been significant to both branches of the Nevin family. Perhaps that is foreshadowing a namesake of a significant Nevin ancestor yet to be discovered.