Incorrect spellings, incorrect transcriptions, and difficult-to-read handwriting create index entries for names that can be difficult to find. One of the more difficult variants to find is one where the first letter has been read incorrectly as an entirely different letter that does not even sound like the original letter.
A family with the last name of Demarah in the 1900 census in upstate New York State is indexed as “Lemarah.” The “D” does look like an “L.” It originally took me forever to find it in the index.
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I have been looking for a variant for the surname “Varnham” for years. Olive, the owner of that surname, was born in 1795 possibly in Pennsylvania, and married in Allegany County, Maryland.
Have you checked “Farnham”?
I found my father’s family in the 1940 with the name of the town in upstate New York and the road on which I knew they were living at the time. The last name had been badly misspelled by the census taker.
I’ve been on both sides, researcher and indexer. I just started helping on another project. The directors want you to type what you see. Many times, after you type some thing in, you want to correct it. For instance Great Britian, may look like Great Bratian. Auto correct just corrected spelling of great!! Ha ha. Anyway as an indexer, I think we should be able to add another possible variance. I have corrected multiple “typos” on Ancestry for family names. When my mom was alive, we would look at old census records and she had me correcting names in the township she grew up in. To her they were people, not just names.
Took me forever to break through a brick wall in my Miller line. The barrier was Sarah White Doby Miller Massey (1782-1861). After two husbands died (including my ancestor) Sarah married Mr. Massey. Trouble is the double s looks like a p and in many indexes she was Sarah Mapey. After zooming in on one document I thought it might be Massey, started searching that name and found a treasure trove. Brick wall smashed!
Since then I’ve found a few articles about how to read archaic calligraphy. Turns out several sets of double letters were combined to create a different appearing “letter” which confuses many indexers.
Jan
Ancestry will not change the original indexing, but it will add variants that are sent in & make the variants searchable.
My two favorite handwriting or indexing errors are: 1) Workman transcribed as Clarkman, & 2) Merican written as the nationality on a group of marriage licenses. In the 1st case, I was able to find the missing Workman census record by searching for a boarder who lived with the family for a number of years. In the 2nd case, after careful study of the names in question, it was determined that they were not Mexican, & the clerk had probably meant “American.”
It took me a very long time to find my Wells family on the 1910 census. When I finally did find them, it wasn’t necessarily a variant that had been the issue. They were listed by a totally different name, Johnson. I later discovered that my ancestors full name was Edward Johnson Wells.
What I can’t understand is Ancestry’s indexing the head of a household incorrectly, yet all the other members of the household indexed with the correct surname. Example 1910, Simpson County, MS: Maddox, Ang (short for Angus) is indexed as “Ling Maddour” and his wife and child indexed correctly with surname “Maddox.” I’ve seen other families indexed this way.
I have noted that as well and have never understood why individuals in the same household with clearly the same last name are transcribed as having different last names.
I found a case where the family name was substituted with a completely different name entirely. The family name was Humphreys, but the indexer wrote Thompson! When I paged through the census record itself, the name was very clear – Humphrey’s. There were no Thompsons on the page at all. Needless to say I sent the correction to Ancestry.