Mightier Acorns

An update on the Callan Name Study

They say the only way to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time,” but there is also a pretty good story out there about the blind wise men trying to describe the elephant. That’s about where I am in this project.

How to Describe an Elephant

To do a comprehensive study of a surname, you have to cast a wide net and find out about all of the variants of that name, where they came from, and who made up the population of people using that surname.

Most of the people I have found so far are Irish folks who spelled the name “Callan.” (“This elephant is like a wall,” said the monk who felt the elephant’s broad side.)

There are also many Scottish records for people with several variations of the name, usually “Callan,” but also “Callen,” “Callin,” and “Callon.” (“This elephant is like the trunk of a tree,” said the monk who felt the elephant’s leg.)

Of course, a large number of Callan folks emigrated to the Americas and Australia, using all of the possible spellings. (“This elephant is rather like a snake,” said the monk who felt the long, flexible trunk.)

Naturally, the surname pops up in small numbers in Finland, Sweden, and Germany, usually as “Calen” or “Calin,” to keep us guessing. (“This elephant seems to be very like a rope,” said the monk who caught the tail.)

There is also an African-American population that carries the name, but we must be mindful of the dark history of how and why they carry the name and, in some cases, the DNA. These cousins deserve some respect for the painful history they carry. (“This elephant is like a saber!” cried the monk who felt the hard, curved tusk.)

This Elephant Is Like a Spreadsheet

Actually, the elephant I’m compiling is a spreadsheet. You should be able to explore it at this link, if you’re interested.

The first tab (bottom-left) is called “WikiTree links,” and I pulled the data from WikiTree using the One Name Trees app I talked about briefly in “Harmonizing With WikiTree.” I’ve begun the process of harmonizing by adding columns for FamilySearch profiles and Ancestry pages, and I’m adding links as I find them.

The “Scotland pre-1855” tab may prove to be a failed experiment – I ran queries on Scotlands People (https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) for “Callan” with the “fuzzy search” parameter, and I ran it across the Church registers for births, marriages, and deaths, hoping that I could find a way to match records belonging to the same person using the spreadsheet’s sort and find functions. Despite nearly 2500 lines, I’ve barely been able to match anyone.

I’ve also got the “Louth c. 1910” tab, for residents of County Louth who appeared in the 1901 and 1911 Ireland census records. Those for whom I’ve found WikiTree profiles are already in the “WikiTree links” tab, as well.

And that last tab, “Early Americans,” has proven to be the most elusive, since “early” is in the eye of the beholder, and I haven’t found a good way to pull comprehensive data out of Ancestry.

What I’ve Learned

The most exciting discovery was the One Name Tree app, which gives me a pretty solid understanding of what is in WikiTree. As I match WikiTree and FamilySearch profiles, I should be able to start categorizing the WikiTree pages so I can take advantage of some of the Connectathon events and Projects that already exist and have a lot of participants.

For example, I know there are several profiles connected to Asberry Piner Callen in Kentucky:

I’ve got links to an Ancestry profile, a FamilySearch profile, and a WikiTree profile here, so if I added Categories to the WikiTree page for the Kentucky Project that indicated which profiles “Need improvement” or “Need family profiles made,” that would help their project members find these pages that could use their attention. And, if they need sources, they may be able to find some already on the other linked pages.

Another family I found using the One Name Tree app was centered on this man:

This is an African-American family, and so far, they don’t appear to be connected to the World Tree. This would be a good starting point for someone looking to help out with the US Black Heritage Project.

How You Can Help

If you have any experience running a Name Study, any advice would be helpful. I feel like there is a lot of preparation and organization left to be done before I will be comfortable reaching out to ask folks in overlapping projects for help, but that may be precisely what I should do!

I still need to figure out how the work I’m doing can benefit the other, existing Name Studies I found:

The Guild of One-Name Studies has a Callan project with about 50 names listed. And Stan Courtney, who manages the Callan DNA study on FTDNA, maintains a Callan – Earliest Known Ancestors database, both at that link and on Ancestry. Callan households in Louth gives a pretty cool overview of the available data.

The important thing, I guess, is that there is progress, and I’m enjoying the work. And that is all I could really hope for.