While working on genealogy for my family and capturing lineal descendant documents, I quickly noted how the spelling of last names can vary over time.
This makes tracing ancestral roots more difficult.
When you are doing name searches, you may try different variations of the spelling if you are having difficulty finding a relative who you know is out there, however you cannot find their records.
An example I ran into which illustrates the point. Note that I found some of these relatives in the same cemetery, next to each other in a family plot with the last name spelled differently. I guess not all relatives agree with each other.
If you are having trouble, don’t hesitate to try different spellings. This can be helpful when searching historical databases.
Example I ran into for my grandfather on my fathers side:
Last name is Schoeny – I think? 🙂
Variations I ran into while searching for my grandfather:
- Schoeny
- Schoney
- Schone
- Shony
- Shoney
- Shine
- Shuny
- Schony
- Shon
- Shone
Also noted and confirmed by some folks in historical societies is that newspapers sometimes were short of letters (picture a block for each letter for a printing press), so they used combinations of letters they had left as long as sounding phonetically correct.
Also, note that not all folks knew how to spell!
Hope this is helpful!
Happy Searching!!
