By LaRae Free Kerr
In a perfect genealogical world, every single person would be represented on a family group record with at least three vital records: birth, marriage, and death certificates. Each certificate would give a name, an event, a date, a place, one or more persons, and a connector which, when combined,

could only represent one unique person among the billions of people who have ever lived. A vital record is an official birth, marriage or death certificate created by governments in the United States. (Other countries call them by different names.) A connector shows that the person in one document is the same person as the one mentioned in a second document.
This collection of information isolating one person from all others is called individuation. An example follows:

Complete individuation for Mary Smith.

Information from birth certificate:

Mary Smith born 1 Jan 1915 in Podunk, Lincoln, Any State to John Smith and Elizabeth Brown Smith.

Information From Marriage Certificate:

Mary Smith, daughter of John Smith, age 20, married Harry Jones, son of
Adam Jones, 1 April 1935 in Podunk, Lincoln, Any State.

Information from death certificate:

Mary Jones, maiden name Smith, age 80, died 1 December 1995 in Podunk,
Lincoln, Any State. Her husband was Harry Jones; the informant on the death certificate was her daughter, Margaret Jones Black.

Even with names as common as these, because of the unique combination of dates, places and relatives’ names, the chances of another Mary Smith matching this Mary Smith exactly are nil. Plus, the connectors are clear: her father, John Smith connects the birth and marriage records; her husband
Harry Jones connects the marriage and death certificates. In addition, her age connects all three documents: the Mary Smith in each one was born about 1915. Therefore, with the aid of these three certificates, the researcher has reached complete individuation for this particular Mary Smith.

In law enforcement, individuation is the process of finding the single source of any clue. For example, in order to prove that a fiber was indeed part of a specific crime scene, that fiber has to be different from all other fibers.
Otherwise, the wrong guy gets sent to jail.

Individuation in general is “the act or process of becoming distinct or
individual, especially the process by which social individuals become differentiated one from the other” (Dictionary.com). In genealogy, the individuation results from a collection of records representing only one person and distinguishing him from every other person, especially those with the same or a similar name.

My own genealogy database has fourteen Mary Baggs in it. Two of them were born in 1854. Yet each Mary Baggs is clearly differentiated from the other by date, place and parents. Even with unusual names like my great grandfather’s – Absalom Pennington Free – I found four in my database.
One is the old man himself, another his son, and the two born 1839 and 1841 are the sons of two of his brothers. So, what does it take to individuate one Absalom Pennington Free from another?

Obviously, a name alone is not enough to identify anyone. To be clearly differentiated from anyone else, each relative should have a minimum of four identifying databits of information for each event: a name, a date, a place and at least one relative like this:

The ideal level of identification is to have the name, event, date, place, relation and connector for the birth, the marriage and the death. That’s eighteen bits of information on each person. And, in genealogy, that’s what researchers strive for. But it just isn’t always possible to get that much information. It can often be done for people who live(d) in the 20th and 21st centuries, however, because records are more complete.

This information and more can be found in The Least You Need to Do to
Find Your Own True Ancestors by LaRae Free Kerr, MED. Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org