Hints on tracing your ancestry!

[Carolina Kiltman]

Amen to all the advice given above! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have traced my Father's family back to 1689, (with a lot of help!) The first rule of tracing your family tree is that spelling don't count! If it sounds even vaguely like the name, then it may well be. People were often semi-literate at best, and that includes the census takers. I was stymied by the name Elijah, then found out that it was really Elisha. . . and the floodgates opened! Also many immigrants changed their names when they arrived, others had their names mangled by the officials who spelled them as they sounded to their ears. (In NE Missouri is a town named for Raleigh, NC, it is spelled Rolla). I think the point is made. Good luck to you! It is both facinating and rewarding!

[macwilkin]

(In NE Missouri is a town named for Raleigh, NC, it is spelled Rolla).

It's actually in central Missouri, roughly at the halfway mark between St. Louis and Springfield on I-44.

Regards,

Todd

[gilmore]

Amen to all the advice given above! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have traced my Father's family back to 1689, (with a lot of help!) The first rule of tracing your family tree is that spelling don't count! If it sounds even vaguely like the name, then it may well be. People were often semi-literate at best, and that includes the census takers. I was stymied by the name Elijah, then found out that it was really Elisha. . . and the floodgates opened! Also many immigrants changed their names when they arrived, others had their names mangled by the officials who spelled them as they sounded to their ears. (In NE Missouri is a town named for Raleigh, NC, it is spelled Rolla). I think the point is made. Good luck to you! It is both facinating and rewarding!

It isn't that spelling was mangled. It is that there was no uniform spelling until the popularization of dictionaries in the early 1800's. Until then, and later, EVERYBODY spelled words as they sounded to them. No spelling was correct and none was incorrect. So, spelling often reflected the changes in pronunciation and accent, as heard by the writer and as heard by others.

I have a deed from the 1730's in which an ancestor was the grantor. The clerk who copied it into the deed book spelled my ancestor's name one way, copied his signature the way he signed it in a second way, and indexed it under a third spelling. All of them were correct, none of them were correct.