Too many Greens

I've been working on a project for the surname Green/Greene in Coventry between 1750 and 1800. This is a time period in Rhode Island research that can be ridiculously challenging since there were few vital records kept, and the best way to establish relationships or identity is by using land and court records. So I toddled off the the Coventry Town Hall to look through the land records which date back to about 1748.

Does anyone know how many male Greens there are in Coventry between 1750 and 1780? Do you have any idea how many land transactions there were? I counted 34 index entries per page and about 50 pages of Greenes for grantor entries up to the year 1845 which is more than 1700 deed entries (and that's just the Grantor index). There have to be over 40 unique individuals with the surname Greene in the area during that time period. When you look at the transactions of just the males named Benjamin Greene in the Grantee Deed Index there are over 30 entries. How does one sort out who's who, how they're related, and which ones to focus on when there are so many?

I've been using 2 techniques (mind maps and spreadsheets) with moderate success for distinguishing all Greene and how they are related. Often, the men or the people taking the information identify their fathers to distinguish among the 3 James, 3 Joseph and 2 Ebenezer Green's all living concurrently in the town.  I had to start somewhere, so I used mind mapping software to help me visualize various families and how they may all be connected. Taking information from a number of different sources I consolidated it into one picture using sources for a specific time period (of course, don't ask me which information came from which source, this is just a visual to sort out who's who on a general scale, I'd have to go back to document everything.) Below is one of the mind maps I created for Greene's in Coventry in the decade between 1740 and 1750.

Mind Map of Greenes in Coventry

I then did it for a later time period when there were even more individuals. In 1778, there were more than 30 taxable inhabitants in Coventry, all with the surname of Greene. Some were women (which helps), and based on how much they were taxed, I could determine if they owned real estate or not which I color coded. This could be helpful when searching for deeds (see below).

X Map of Greenes in 1778

While I have only touched the surface of mapping, I can imagine creating a mind map for each source with all the information contained in it. I can imagine shifting the families around to then overlay them onto a map of town to determine if they group geographically. Fortunately, Coventry covers the largest amount of area of any town in Rhode Island so reconstructing land parcels using physical maps might prove useful as well. But which specific deeds should I look at?

My thought was that as I looked through the Grantee index, I could often distinguish individual land sales from the distribution of an estate by looking for "et al" or "administrator," suggesting that the land sale had something to do with a probate. While the probate records are pretty good, if someone didn't leave a will, it's often difficult to determine who the heirs were, despite the fact that the estate still had to be divided amongst the heirs. So I went through the index and chose all the grantor deeds that contained "et al" and put them into a spreadsheet that I could then sort in a number of ways.
Example of Greene Spreadsheet

Greene et al Grantor	Grantee	Vol	pg	Year
Ann  et al	Benjamine Green	9	66	1777
Benjamin	Nathaniel Green	5	5	1767
Benjamin	Thomas Stafford	6	18	1768
Caleb	Elisha Greene	5	130	1769
Caleb	John Andrews	5	308	1771
Catherine	John Matteson	7	57	1777
Cathrine	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Christopher et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Christopher et al	Peter Levally	7	68	1778
Christopher et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777
Christopher et al	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Deborah	Charles Cook	5	209	1772
Elihu et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Elihu et al	Benjamine Vaughan	5	340	1777
Elihu et al	John Greene	5	425	1782
Elihu et al	John Matteson	7	52	1777
Elihu et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777

There were more than 70 entries. Then, by sorting them by volume and page, I could see which individuals mentioned in an "et al" deed sorted together, were found in the same volume and page, meaning that they appeared in the same deed together and were probably related. I can later determine whether they were all related using other documentary evidence. It worked pretty well. I could also sort based on year, or grantee, to organize my research plan and focus on the years when I knew someone died, or a significant first name, or whatever.

While my Green project isn't quite finished, I hope that other folks working in towns with dozens of individuals with the same surname can use these techniques to sort out family groups to focus your research to find what you're looking for!