When Two Oles Share a Birthday
Avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree can be harder than it looks, even when you feel you have “solid” facts in front of you. A recent conversation with a reader reminded me just how easy it is to latch onto the first promising candidate and build an entire line on someone else’s great-grandfather.
We had been working together on his ancestor Ole Johnsen, a Norwegian emigrant to South Africa, whose story – at first glance – seemed wonderfully straightforward. There was a tombstone with a clear birthdate, a marriage certificate that stated his place of birth as “Romsdal ampt (amt) (now Møre og Romsdal county)”, and access to the Norwegian digital archives.
What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot, as it turned out.
If you haven’t already, you should read the story about Norwegians in the Boer war: A small nation in a distant conflict.
When the facts seem to line up a little too nicely
My reader did exactly what we are all encouraged to do:
Start from known information.
Work backwards in time.
Use original records where possible.
He took the birth date from the tombstone and the county of birth from the marriage certificate and went to the parish registers in the Norwegian archives.
There he found what looked like the perfect match:
A boy named Ole
Born 29 May 1861
In Møre og Romsdal
Name, date, and county all lined up beautifully. Many researchers would have stopped right there, entered this Ole into their software, and started filling in parents, grandparents, and siblings. It felt like a textbook case of avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree — or so he thought.
The second Ole hiding in the same records
When my reader contacted me and showed me “his” Ole, I did a wider search of the parish registers from Møre og Romsdal
That was when things got interesting.
On the very same day, in the same county, even the same parish, there was another Ole born.
Same given name.
Same birth date.
Same broader region as given in the South African records.
From the point of view of someone sitting far away with English-language documents and an online search box, the first Ole looked good enough. But now there were two boys who could, at least on paper, have grown up to be the man whose tombstone now stood in a cemetery far from Norway.
This is exactly the kind of situation where avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree becomes a serious challenge. One wrong assumption at this stage, and every earlier generation you add will belong to someone else’s story.
Why “good enough” is not good enough
On the surface, everything matched: the right name, the right date, the right county. But once we realised there were two possible Oles, we had to slow down and ask some uncomfortable questions:
Which family circumstances fit best with the later South African records?
Which Ole’s relatives, ages, and movements matched the wider picture?
Were there any indirect clues – witnesses, neighbours, migration patterns – that pointed us in one direction?
As we compared evidence, it became clear that one Ole’s family line stayed firmly rooted in the local community, while the other line showed connections and movements that lined up with what we already knew about the emigrant Ole.
Nothing in this process was dramatic or glamorous. It was simply careful, patient cross-checking. Yet this quiet checking is often the difference between solid research and “barking up the wrong tree.”
Enter the bygdebok
This is where the bygdebok becomes such a powerful – and, in my view, still underused – tool.
Bygdebøker are local history and farm books. They tie together:
Families and farms
Generations and movements
Parish register entries, censuses, and other local sources
When we checked the relevant bygdebok sections, a more nuanced picture emerged:
One Ole’s family stayed rooted in the local community. We also confirmed this by finding the relevant local records.
The other Ole’s family and patterns that lined up perfectly with the emigrant Ole we were looking for. It even told us that Ole went to south Africa and fought in the Boer war. This last fact was unknown to my reader and opened a whole new line of research.
The bygdebok gave us:
The correct farm name associated with “our” Ole
His parents and siblings, which later matched other indirect clues
A plausible emigration pattern, in line with the dates and destinations we already had from overseas records
Suddenly it was clear: the apparently “perfect” Ole from Surnadal was not the right man. The “other” Ole from the same date was.
Without the bygdebok, my reader would almost certainly have chosen the wrong one – with a fully documented, beautifully sourced, but completely incorrect ancestral line to follow.
For more information about the bygdebok (plural: bygdebøker) see my articles What is a bygdebok, Bygdebøker in American libraries and, Bygdebøker available online.
Lessons from the “two Oles” case
The story of our two Oles offers several useful reminders for anyone concerned with avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree.
1. Treat tombstones and certificates as clues, not final answers
Tombstones and marriage certificates are extremely valuable, but they are usually secondary sources. Dates can be off by a year or two, places can be simplified, and the people providing the information might have been guessing.
Use them as starting points, not as the last word.
2. Always check for other candidates
If you find an apparently perfect match in the parish registers, do not assume that this person is unique. In Norway, common names like Ole, Hans, Peder, Kari, and Anne appear again and again, often in the same parish and even on the same page.
When you think you have found “your” person, stop and ask:
Could there be another child with the same name and similar date of birth?
What happens if I widen the search to neighbouring parishes or nearby farms?
In our case, we did not just find a similar candidate; we found another Ole on the same day in the same county.
3. Look for context, not just matching details
Genealogy is about more than lining up names and dates. It is about understanding people in their setting. To decide between the two Oles, we had to look at:
Families, neighbours, and godparents
Local migration patterns
How the family story in Norway connected with the later story abroad
When the broader context is taken into account, the right candidate usually begins to stand out.
4. Be ready to change your mind
Perhaps the hardest part of avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree is the willingness to admit that a neat, comfortable conclusion might be wrong. My reader could easily have ignored the second Ole and carried on with his original choice.
Instead, he accepted that new evidence required a fresh look and was willing to shift to the better-supported candidate. That flexibility is the hallmark of good research.
“I would have gone barking up the wrong tree”
In the end, my reader put it better than I could:
“The lesson that I learned from that was that if it was not for the bygdebok, I would have gone completely barking up the wrong tree!”
The danger in modern genealogy is that our tools are so powerful and so fast. Digital archives, indexed databases, and clever search functions make it easy to find someone who fits. But they do not guarantee that we have found the right person.
Avoiding the wrong ancestor in our family tree means resisting the temptation to stop at the first plausible match and instead building our conclusions on multiple, independent pieces of evidence.
A gentle reminder for all of us
For me, the story of the two Oles on the same day is a quiet reminder that traditional, careful methods are still essential:
Check the original records.
Look for alternative candidates.
Think about the wider context.
Be willing to revise your conclusions.
If you keep these principles in mind, you greatly improve your chances of avoiding the wrong ancestor in your family tree – and of telling the right story about the right person.
If you have questions or comments, drop a word in the comment section below or through the contact page.
