One of the typical problems that arises when you start doing genealogy is determining whether the person you have found is really the person you are looking for. For example, what if you are looking for “Emma Smith”, born in 1878, in New York City — if you don’t know her parents and you find someone matching this date and place, are you sure you have the right person? In this case, I was helping someone whose problem was even trickier — what if you find someone whose birth date and parents match, but their first and last names are different? How do you “prove” that someone changed their name?

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