This was inspired by all of the times I’ve had to untangle conflated families.
During WikiTree’s annual Source-A-Thon in October 2025 I was researching the family of George Warren to try and find sources for him (I couldn’t, unfortunately). I didn’t have any luck with his already well-researched son Pompey Warren, so I decided to research his daughter Delia Warren. It turns out that the Delia attached to him and his wife Patsy on WikiTree wasn’t actually their daughter. She was very similar at face value, though. Both Delias were black, lived in Cass County, Texas, and were of a similar age.
George Warren’s Daughter | The Other Delia Warren |
|---|---|
| Black. Born in about 1847 in maybe Mississippi. Lived in Cass County, Texas. | Black. Born in about 1854 in almost certainly Mississippi. Lived in Cass County, Texas. |
| Did not marry. | Married Tony Pruitt in 1868. |
| 1870 Census: Living with her mother along with her brother Pompey, her daughter, and her niece. | 1870 Census: Living with her husband. |
| 1880 Census: Living with her two children, Betsy and Buddy. | 1880 Census: Living with her husband and their four children. |
This family was created via GEDCOM import on WikiTree in 2012 from data that was incorrect. I’m willing to cut the creator some slack because there were far fewer genealogical records available digitally in 2012 than are available now. In addition to George Warren not being sourced, his sons Chris and William are also not sourced. All three may have been added to this person’s tree based on family lore.
What alerted me to the fact that the attached Delia was incorrect was the discovery of her in the 1870 census with her brother and the fact that she was unmarried. I’m not sure if the original creator added any sources to Pompey’s profile after import, though I know his profile was next updated in 2019.
While this error was relatively easy to spot, there are a lot of cases when it’s much more complicated to determine whether or not the person in the record matches the person you’re researching.
It turns out that I would run into more issues with Delia when trying to find census records after the 1880 census because there were at least two other Delias in Cass County, Texas and FamilySearch kept suggesting they might be the same as the one I was researching.
Delia #3’s married name was Warren and her birth year estimate was similar to “my” Delia’s. She also had a son named Bud born about the same time as “my” Delia’s Buddy. Her last name at birth seems to be Allen, however, based on her son Babe’s death record (since it’s possible that Babe’s mother’s name on his death record is wrong, Delia #3 and “my” Delia could actually be the same person). Delia #4 married an Allen and her last name at birth was Hicks. This Delia was easy to rule out because she was born about 20 years after “my” Delia, but I temporarily confused her with Delia #3 because the Delia (Hicks) Allen’s death record was attached Delia (Allen) Warren. I wasn’t able to find census records before 1900 for Delias #3 and #4 and I haven’t been able to find a census record past 1880 for “my” Delia.
I also came across a very similar potential match while researching “my” Delia’s daughter Betsy Warren who was also from Cass County, Texas and had a similar birth year. The two had already been conflated on FamilySearch: there were children with different surnames mixed together which is what tipped me off that two different people were conflated (there was a Warren child then an Allen child then a Warren child when sorted by age). However, Delia’s Betsy had never married according to her death record, while the other Betsy married an Allen. Unmarried Betsy’s children had the Warren surname while the other Betsy’s children had the Allen surname. I initially thought that widow Betsy married a Warren after she married James Allen, but it turns out that Warren was also the widow Betsy’s last name at birth and she went back to using it after her husband died. Warren was a very common surname amongst black people in Cass County, Texas according to census records. There were three slave owners with the surname Warren in 1860 in Cass County and H Warren and E Warren had 80 slaves between the two of them.
Some Tips For Avoiding Conflation
- Create a tree for the person you’re researching on a website that has genealogical records so that you can attach records to their profile. I use FamilySearch because it’s free, but you could use Ancestry or MyHeritage instead. If you view records “in isolation” (without attaching them to a profile) it makes it harder to spot errors. Also, all three websites will generate record hints based on the information associated with a profile.
- Make sure the vital data for the person in the record makes sense before attaching it. Is the birthplace in the record very far away from the birth place of your research person? Is the birth year within 10 years of your research person’s birth year?
- Check for existing records of the same type already attached to the person you’re researching. Did you already find a 1900 census record for your research person? If yes, the person in the second census record is probably not the correct person. However, there are some cases where people have been recorded more than once during the same census enumeration, however (for example: a child recorded in both their parents’ household and in another relative’s household or when the family moved during the census enumeration period).
- Consider the timeline. Was your research person old enough for that 1870 marriage record to belong to them? Were they already married? Did they really move to New York before the 1940 census was enumerated when they were living in Florida in 1930 and 1950?
- When considering a marriage record without birth information on it, try to find census records for your target person after the marriage to confirm their birth year and birth location.
- Be sure to check for additional marriages for women, especially if they were over 35 when they married. A record for a remarriage will typically use her current surname instead of her last name at birth. Sometimes a married name is used instead of her last name at birth on one of her childrens’ marriage or death records, which can cause you to mix up people.
Some Caveats When Researching Black People in the US
- Some types of data recorded for black people is often not correct (especially data from census records). For example, I have a great-grandfather whose age was recorded as 1854 in the earliest record found for him (the 1870 census) and as 1841 on his 1926 death record. People’s recorded birthplaces also may not be accurate, the names of their parents may not be accurate, and their race may not be accurate (some lighter black people could pass as white). You need to take multiple records into consideration.
- Families sometimes changed their surname, especially between 1870 and 1900. If the members of the family have identical or similar first names and birth years but a different surname from an earlier record, they still may be the same family. For example, this family changed their surname from Dean to Moore sometime between 1880 and 1900.