If you have tried to find your ancestors on the online census indexes or birth, marriage and death indexes, but have been unable to get any results, don’t give up.  Remember that these indexes have been copied from handwriting, which can often be very difficult to read.  Errors are far more common than you might think.

Sometimes, it is not even the transcribers fault!  To give you an example of this, I tried for a very long time to find my grandfather, Francis McEwen on the 1871 census.  As he was later known as Francis MANLEY, I had tried every possible spelling of both surnames on the Ancestry.co.uk indexes, using the phonetic search, and trying out every possible spelling of McEwen (which are many!).

Eventually,  in desperation, I tried taking out the Christian name.  In looking through the long list that followed I found this entry:

Fracis McEwen, born about 1865, Ardwick, Manchester.

Bingo!

All that was missing was that little “n” – and when I looked at the original census document, I found that it was the fault of the enumerator, not the transcriber!

This little discovery led to a whole new breakthrough in my Manley/McEwen ancestry and uncovered a mystery surrounding my grandfather’s parentage.

This all goes to show that if you are having difficulty finding your ancestor on these indexes, you really need to spend some time with different surname and Christian name spellings.  Of course, you can un-check the “exact spelling” box to enable a phonetic search – but do not rely on this.  There has been many a time when I have found an ancestor by trying a different spelling myself when it had not come up under a phonetic search.

On Ancestry.co.uk, you can search for a surname without a Christian name, or vice versa, and it is certainly worth doing this if you are getting no results – unless, of course, your ancestors surname is something like Smith or Brown, in which case you will get far too many results from the surname alone!

Equally, entering the Christian name without the surname is only really effective if you have a fairly unusual name or you are searching within a very small parish.

Using genealogy records online is not as straight forward as it may seem, and there is a real knack to using the online indexes.  The trick is to keep trying every possible spelling or mis-spelling of your family surnames, and don’t forget to try variations of all the other search criteria, such as location and relationship too.  Even male and female have been known to get muddled up!

Happy hunting!

There are several reasons why this happens.

1.  Up until the 19th century there were no standardized spellings for surnames.  Also, many people rarely wrote their own name and many of the documents that we use in family history have been written by someone who has been given the name orally.  For example, when one of my Reid ancestors got married, he would give his name to the presiding vicar (or in this case, priest, as they were Catholics!), who would write it down as he heard it.  Therefore, this line of my family can be found under REID, REED or READ – and possibly even REDE.

2.  Foreign immigrants often anglicized their names because the local people found their name difficult to pronounce, or because they wanted to fit in with the local community, or because of discrimination.  The German name, ALBRECHT could therefore become ALLBRIGHT, and the Jewish name COHEN could become KAHN.

3.  Heavy accents could result in surnames being mis-heard when given to someone from a different area.  This could be the case if your ancestors have moved from place to place.

4.  Where surnames have been indexed in more recent times, the indexers have had to decipher some difficult handwriting, and very often names have therefore been mis-spelt.

This means that when you are researching your family, you will often need to check out various spellings before you find the right entry.

In some cases, this can be quite tedious, as I have found with my maternal grandfather, whose actual birth name (he was adopted) was MCEWEN.  I have found the following possibilies for this surname and there are many more: MCKOWAN, MCEWEN, MCEWAN, MAGOWEN, MCKEON, MCKEOWN, MCKEWEN, MCKEWAN, MCCUNE and so on.

This problem is solved to a large extent by the fact that most indexes search phonetically (though you can opt to search for an exact spelling if you wish).  However, these do not always cover every possibility, and it may sometimes be necessary to use your imagination and try a few different spellings in the search box.

For example, in parts of Northamptonshire, I once discoverd that the name PETTIFER had evolved from the 17th century name of PECKOVER.

Try saying the name out loud with the dialect of the region and seeing how the vowel sounds flatten or widen.  And what about if the person saying the name had a cold!?

Also, think about common mis-spellings.  For example, the “S” at the end of some names, such as SIMMONS, could be dropped, or a double letter shortened to one.  Modern typing errors often involve a key that is next to the correct on, so NUNN could become MUNN.

Think about letters that could easily look like another when viewing old handwriting.  One one of the census indexes I found that my BOTT ancestors had been indexed as BATT.

Genealogy, and in particular surname spellings, is never a straight-forward activity!  But this is what makes it so interesting – and also so rewarding when you finally discover your ancestor after doing some imaginative detective work.