Spelling Irregularities are a Genealogy Fact of Life

Variations in how your ancestor’s name was spelled can be endlessly frustrating. However, it’s worth remembering that a variation of how your ancestor’s name appears in an index can arise from a variety of situations:

• Your ancestor did not know how to spell his name
• Your ancestor could not read
• Your ancestor did not speak clearly
• Your ancestor had an accent with which the writer of his name was unfamiliar
• The clerk didn’t care
• The clerk had bad writing
• The transcriber could not read the name
• The transcriber did not care
• The transcriber made a typographical error
• The document has faded over time and is difficult to read
• Or something else

Keep in mind that one of more of these could explain why James Rampley ends up indexed as Jarvis Pample.