General Chat

Wilf and others, "The bride and groom were never asked to prove their names- just to provide the names they were known by. This means they were married using their nicknames rather than those found on their birth certificate" Your Family Tree magazine Issue I June 2003 ( includes article about this site and fotos of founders Julie and Stephen Pankhurst) I have an ancestor whose birth records say he was Thomas George North, but his marriage certificate says George Thomas North- the moral of the story is in Family research keep an open mind about names, don't expect to build a tree with the same name with the same spellings from today backwards through time. If you find an ancestor with more than one Christian name always do searches swopping them round and always search other spellings. remember illiteracy was common- if the couple couln't read they had no way of checking that the registrars and census enumerators had copied down the way they spelt their names. Then you have volunteer transcribers, Usa LDS transcribers and prisoners copying from sources-- expect there to be discrepancies.I always get my post misspelt today, even in response to forms I have filled out myself. I have another ancestor who deliberately changed his name from John to Johns-- I had found a census entry which matched every other detail so I claimed him, while waiting for confirmation, which I now have-- but if I had been precious about only keeping track of relations with exactly the same spellings, I would have thrown away vital clues.So everybody- be flexible with names!!!!