[or-roots] Names, they do Change

[Leslie Chapman]

Dolores;

I can think of three ways for you to come up with possibilities; the worst
case most unreliable being my method described;

>if you go; McC  McL MacC MacL MucC MucL and then add ane ain aine oin oine
and get this aire air are to each of those, you will come close. I do for a
fact remember that McLair was one of the variants I saw for that surname,
whether that holds true for YOUR line or not I can't say.

But when searching the internet, and especially Census info it helps to keep
all those in mind. I have found folks with surnames and given names whose
spelling made absolutely no sense, I suspected the taker couldn't read his
notes and was too lazy to go back and ask so he made it up. I have seen
whole families listed with one birth place when mom and pop were born in
differant states and the children were born in three different states.
Either the note takein was poor, or the listening was poor one or the
other.<

What I described for McLane you could apply to Brotherton and Keys, but for
a more formal look you could try going to Ancestry.com and searching on the
surname by itself, somewhere you will see a check box that says exact
spelling or soundex, click on soundex and you will get all the variations
they have in their archives for that surname, you can also do the same thing
for the 1880 Census at;

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/searc
h_census.asp

just make sure the "exact spelling" box at bottom of page is NOT checked and
see what you get. If there are not a lot of folks in the 1880 Census with
variations on the surname you may not get much, on the other hand you might
be surprised.

What you do have to keep in mind though, especially if you are using an
online Census index the way I have been with Heritage quest, is that 'formal
variations' may not cover all possibilities, I am not aware of Milven being
listed anywhere as a variation on the surname Melvin except in the 1880
Gardiner Oregon Census where my great grandfather's next door neighbor
didn't know how his name was spelled, I had to go through the Census page by
page to find Milen Milven when I was looking for Milan Melvin and the LDS
soundex wasn't astute enough to offer the former to me.

My point before I wandered off on that diatribe about Mr. Reed, was that
formal variations may not be enough; Keyes for example could be Ceez or Geez
somewhere, not because that makes any sense, but because that might be as
close as the person writing whatever info is relevant down could get it. As
I commented to Bob, some of the stuff you find in Census pages can only make
sense if you assume alcohol, drugs or supreme indifference to facts were
involved, by the same token we still owe a tremendous debt to those intrepid
souls who passed along all of that misinformation to us, for the good stuff
the DID write down and even for the misinformation because often it will
guide you to the answer you need.

Les C

-----Original Message-----
From: or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us
[mailto:or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us]On Behalf Of D. J.
Brotherton
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 8:19 AM
To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us
Subject: Re: [or-roots] Names, they do Change


I see all your name changes it is amazing how different they are  - how does
one research the name spellings.  I have two names that I have difficulty
going back beyond grandparents - Brotherton and Keyes.  Is there a database
or book that I could use?

Dolores
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