The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Misspellings can frustrate genealogists
This story was published Nov. 14, 1999
"Why U Can't Find Your Ancestors: Misspeld Knames - A Commun Probblem for Reeserchors." The title of Lesson 8 on Roots Web's Guide to Tracing Family Trees practically reached right out of my computer screen and latched onto my eyeballs.
In the first place, I have a natural admiration for the author of those spellings. President Andrew Jackson and I share an unabashed respect for creative spellers. It was President Jackson who said, "Any man who can't think of more than one way to spell a word is no damned good." That's from memory, but close enough for our purposes.
Second, I have ancestors I can't find. I don't need a genealogist to tell me why I can't find John Day, who married Elizabeth McKenzie in Louisville, Ky., in 1838. I know why I can't find John. He's hiding from me!
But I thought perhaps the genealogy lesson might give me clues on how to find my second great-grandfather. So I printed it off the Web page for later study.
I was at RootsWeb.com, the Internet's oldest and largest free genealogy community.
If you haven't visited RootsWeb.com, and have Internet access, by all means, go to www.rootsweb.com/
You could spend a day just cruising around RootsWeb.com. Take a quick cruise if you haven't been there, then follow the link to RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees or go to www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/.
This will take you to a page that contains 18 lessons on genealogical research.
They are written by Julia M. Case, Rhonda McClure and Myra Vanderpool Gormley. Gormley, in my opinion, may be the best genealogy columnist in the nation.
I hope your computer can handle lots of graphics, because these pages have quite a few.
Lessons include where to begin, using technology, researching vital records, census records, tax records, military records and a multitude of other subjects, including "Why U Can't Find Your Ancestors."
As the full lesson title suggests, one reason you might not be able to find your ancestor is because of spelling problems. Tell me about it. Many of my ancestors were illiterate and some of the literate ones couldn't spell worth beans.
Our contemporary preoccupation with prissy spelling is a relatively modern malady.
If you don't believe me, just look up what President Jackson had to say on the subject.
You would think a name like Day would be relatively trouble free. Ha! Besides Day and Dey, we have the Daze. I get a chuckle out of the Daze. I found them as I plodded my way through a Virginia census. DAZE. And they obviously are the same family that a late census records as DAY.
I imagine a census taker - perhaps himself barely literate, or perhaps of a Jacksonian bent with respect to spelling - knocking on the cabin door and asking, "Who lives here?"
"The Days," said someone, and the enumerator dutifully wrote down what he heard: D A Z E.
If you want to know why you can't find your "ansesters" take a tip from this Daze and tune your Internet browser to RootsWeb.com and take the whole lesson.