| Breaking Down Walls, Brick by Brick: The Search for Henrietta | ||||||||||
| Step Six: Not where they should be? Get creative with surname spellings | ||||||||||
When you are fairly certain that your family lived in a particular area but are having no luck finding them in the records, it is time to get creative. Searching for alternate spellings of surnames is always important in genealogy, but you need to be sure to go beyond looking only for the traditional alternatives. Not only did families often change the spelling of their surname slightly to Americanize, to aid in pronunciation, or just to set themselves apart, but surnames were also often misspelled in records by accident. People were not as well educated in the past as they are today and names may have been written as they sounded or even just invented. Get creative when identifying alternate surname spellings for your family and dont be afraid to try the odd or unexpected. The new alternate surname spellings that you create may be just the thing you need to demolish your brick wall. My fairly innocuous CRISP surname was also traditionally spelled CHRISP. Going beyond the expected, however, I have also found them in records under CHRYSP, CRIPS, CRIP and even CRIS all in the same county of Edgecombe, NC. With Henriettas MARIN surname I didnt have as much luck. The obvious alternate was MARTIN and I even branched out to search surnames such as MYERS. Having no luck with these alternate spellings was what finally got me to thinking that maybe the surname was incorrect in the first place.
Creativity Required - Alternative Surname Spellings
How to Use Soundex Codes Surname Meanings & Origins Deciphering Old Handwriting Next page > Did they put down roots? Follow the land |
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URL:
http://genealogy.about.com/library/weekly/aa042602g.htm
© 2002 Kimberly
Powell
A version of this article was originally
published in the October 2001 edition of
Everton's Genealogical Helper

