Aims

The One-Name Study

The aims of this one-name study are:

Genealogy and Origins Aims

• to identify as many Goathams, Gothams and those with variant spellings who have lived as possible;
• to assemble trees to show how these people are related;
• to have as few unlinked strays as possible!
• to see what these trees and other evidence suggest about the origins of the name.

I hope to find out if / how the various groupings relate to each other, but to describe it as an aim may be an overstatement, since I suspect the information may not survive to permit this. DNA tests may offer a possibility, but even then there are limitations (see my page regarding a DNA study for more detailed considerations).

Family History Aims

• to collect data relating to these people; not just BMD / CMB events, but also census data, wills, educational, military and occupational records etc., newspaper reports, criminal and equity court records;
• to explore the subjects raised by these records, exploring or researching the topics to put them into context where appropriate and to ‘bring history to life’ by seeing how they impacted on the lives of Go(a)thams;
• to look at patterns shown by the – for example, the inheritance of occupations (or not), the similarity of families married into (or not).

This website

The aims of this website are:

• primarily, to enable me to share the fruits of my research to all those who may be interested;
• secondly, to encourage and help others to contribute to this study;
• thirdly, to help those with Go(a)tham ancestors find others interested in the same branch (with whom, of course, they will share non-Go(a)tham ancestors and may wish to share information).

Last updated: 1 May, 2021