Anyone tracing their family tree will have come across that problem where you know that you should be able to find an ancestor in a particular index but they don't seem to be there. Census records are a common area where ancestors seem to "disappear" for example.
How can we find these elusive ancestors and why might they disappear off the records?
The are common reasons why our ancestors might disappear.
- Spelling - Names were normally written down by the person who was officially recording an event. Different people might use different spelling variations. There could be a mistake simply because the person recording information misheard a name.
- AKA - Often people were not known by their birth name, The name on the birth certificate may say, for example, Jane Mary Paterson. On records such as the census on some occasions she may have been recorded as Jane however if she was known as Mary, it could have been this that is recorded or many people called Jane were known as Jean, Jeannie or Janet. She may also appear with a completely different first name because although she was registered as Jane, she gets called Anne, for example.
- Transcription errors - Old handwriting may not be clear so it is easy for errors to be made with transcriptions. People are not perfect and transcriptions are often done by volunteers who are giving their best efforts. Sometimes people simply make a mistake.
- Indexes - Sites use different methods of indexing for the same information so how you might extract the information in one will not work on another or would bring forward some results that are the same and some that are different.
So how might we find them?
- Using wildcards, soundex and all the other search tools can help widen the search but can also bring different results depending on what site that you use. Sites will often give you variations on the spelling of a name but try the same search on different sites and you will come up with a different set of results according to which names they think match closely enough to your original enquiry.
- Finding out information about your ancestor from other sources may shed some light on where they were or the name by which they were known.
- Sometimes it is a case of sitting down and going through pages of information page by page.
- It's important to check a number of sites to find an elusive ancestor or to cross reference your results where the name varies from what you were expecting. This can be expensive of course as most websites cost money to access and time consuming if you are unaware of the best strategies.
How do you cut down on costs and use the best strategies?
At Kin Tree, we subscribe and use a number of websites so paying for an hour or two of our time will cost a lot less than subscribing to all the sites yourself. Also, being expert researchers we know the best strategies to get results. Contact us for a no obligation chat or further information at:
