Over the last year I have gotten involved in researching my family tree. My paternal grandfather came from a remote island in the Atlantic, along with hundreds of others of his generation, and many of them settled within the same area. As the island is very small, they shared a small number of family names (about 30 surnames, with some variations of the same name).
I would really like to use my GIS knowledge to firstly gather data on where the descendents are living now (the recently established Society has compiled a small database), and then to analyse the data to map out the various family names/bloodlines/races (the islanders are a melting pot of races, absolutely fantastic).
Before I offer my services to the Society, I'd like to know if anyone has undertaken something similar, and what would be the best way to approach it? As mentioned in the question title, I want to use ArcGIS Online so that others will be able to add their info and I would manage the data. Some light googling indicates that geocoding surnames might be part of what I am looking for, but as I have no experience with it I'm not sure.