Genealogy Records Online and Family Surnames

The internet has been a marvellous tool for family historians.  Indexes and records that previously could only be seen by travelling to an archives office can now be searched, and often viewed, online within minutes and a few mouse clicks.  However, online research is not without its problems.  Genealogy records online have often been copied and transcribed several times, and this inevitably produces errors, particularly with family surnames and Christian names.

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!