Believe me, every researcher has said this at some time. An ancestor can’t be found in a census, government record, or the name doesn’t appear anywhere in the country he claims as a homeland. There are all kinds of reasons that someone can’t be found. Spelling variations are a major problem. Until about 1910, when states took over birth and death records, the spelling of a surname was sort of optional. Even within your own family, some choose one spelling over another. One great-aunt of mine used “McDaniel” while her brother spelled his name “McDaniels”. The story was that the two had a disagreement at one time and disavowed each other as family. They didn’t speak to each other for 20 years. I am not saying I came from a stubborn family, but when you consider they were adults who lived a block apart in a small town the size of Meeker, some might say they were a little ornery.
Until social security numbers came along, even birthdays were a bit suspect. I mean, who was going to challenge a mature lady who might drop a year or two in age? What I am saying is, never discard a record on the sole basis of wrong name or date. Another problem in names is the use of a middle name or nickname even in documents. Census records are notorious for different first names in multiple census records. I usually go with the oldest record supplied by a parent. Some census takers were lazy and just wrote down an initial. It was popular to not use your given name, simply because you didn’t like it. My grandmother’s name was Beula, and she hated it. She went by “Bobbie.” Her father appears in various records as Albert, Al, Sidney Albert, Albert Sidney. He apparently was named after a famous Confederate General who died in the Civil War.
It is sometimes helpful to guess at a real first name by studying the naming patterns of the family. Descendants from English families often named the first son after the father, second son after an uncle, and so on in the same birth order in each generation. This causes real confusion with first cousins with the same name since they share the same grandfather. Other cultures have different naming conventions. You may find in Swedish records a child’s name with two or more birth years. It is not a mistake. If a child was christened with a favorite name and died very young, the mother would wait a bit and reuse the name. Since infant mortality rates were high in the 17th century, you could see three christenings with the same name.
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME IS STILL A ROSE, or a Roselyn, Rosey, or a “Bobbie”.
Ed Peck can be reached through this newspaper or the White River Museum.
Special to the Herald Times
