* Age at Census issue

[jmurphy]

SSL won't allow very many searches before it starts nagging you to donate, but it is an interesting program.

It may also help to do a Google search for blog entries and articles on finding surname variants.

There are several different problems --

1) variant spellings written down by how the name sounded
2) bad transcriptions due to computer OCR
3) loan-translations -- great fun if you have ancestors who were German, whose town became part of Poland, so they went from having the surname BLACK (in German) to BLACK (in Polish) then came to the USA and had people who didn't know Polish transcribing their name

Some codes like Soundex help with variant vowels but assume the consonants are correct. Other codes deal with sound but can't help with letter confusions (m/n). Maddening, isn't it?

Jan

[jmurphy]

I'm not quite sure how the FamilyLabs Standard Finder for names is supposed to work, but the place name finder is fabulous. Type in a place name and it will give you all the places in their database which have that name.

Perhaps the name tab on the FL Standard Finder is more helpful for first name variants.

Jan

[researcher]

Did you know that the IFHF site http://ifhf.brsgenealogy.com/ searches it surnames variations. There is none there for Macnany , but searching for Mcnany also searches
NANNY MCNANIC MCNANNEY
MCNANNY MCNANY MCNENY

Click on the plus variants link in the search results.

[billbirchall]

The latest on this saga is that I have sent away for a 2nd birth Cert. You may recall that the first one said Macnany. The second was says McInnerny!!

[robbo43]

Ages can be pretty erratic in records. My great grandmother, Emma Townsend born 1849, has the following ages on records -
1851 - 1, 1861 - 10, 1881 - 30, 1886 ('marriage') - 29, 1891 - 34, 1901 - 42,
1922 (death)- 71. I also have another ancestor who consistently aged 7 years between censuses

Robert