Family research can have you jumping for joy, fill you with pride, and give you a sense of accomplishment. However, it can also make you tear your hair out, driving you crazy when you hit a brick wall. Everyone at some point in their research will hit a brick wall. For some this stops all their research. Some keep banging their head against this wall, with little result. Some walk away from that line, but return when more records become available or they have an idea of other resources to use.
One roadblock can be names, of places, people or things. We may use different terms or names for things than our ancestors’ did, so reading a letter can be confusing. Another source that can be both helpful and create problems is the census. The census takers were not always one hundred percent accurate. One example in my recent research was a last name. The family I was looking up, a father, a mother and three daughters, all lived in one house, sounds easy. Well, the eldest daughter was already married, so her last name was different. That was ok, I knew that, however, when the census taker wrote down her married name they also wrote it as the last name of her younger and very much unmarried sisters. Luckily, they are all listed because they live in the same house, and I am very familiar with the family so I did not mistake it for her children, or sibling’s from another family living with this one. I knew the eldest daughters married name, so it didn’t create a road block. This example shows how easily mistakes could be made, had I not been familiar with the family, I could have drawn many other conclusions. My online tree gave me a bit of a problem when trying to attach the census with the wrong last name, it was trying to tell me they were new additions, but luckily with was an easy fix and I was able to attach them to the correct people, with the correct last name.
Spelling mistakes of last names are the most common although sometimes a middle or nick name was written down as the persons’ legal first name. Census are a great resource, don’t get hung up in the name spelling, if location, dates, and first names match then chances are you can accept that the census taker just got it wrong. Realize that our ancestors, especially ones who immigrated, may have had a thick accent, or maybe the census taker did, there is also the possibility some of our ancestors could not read and write well or at all.
Another bump on my research road involved a town name. I was looking up a different part of my tree, when I came across the name: “St. George’s Manor”. I had no known relative in that part of the family named George, and I couldn’t understand what made him a Saint. So, I put St. George’s Manor into an internet search engine and up popped the history of a town where later members of the family resided: Manorville, NY. Turns out, Manorville was called St. George’s Manor around the time when the original land grant was given. According to the Manorville Chamber of Commerce website the story goes that there was a sign that read “St. George’s Manor” at the train station in 1844, a Patriot, Seth Raynor, who had supported the newly formed United States in the Revolution, painted over the words “St. George” as they were apparently pro England, Saint George is the patron saint of England and a symbol of the English monarchy. After he was done with the paint brush all that was left was “Manor”, in 1907 or so the post office officially called it “Manorville”. At another point in its history it was also known as Punk’s Hole named for a Revolutionary war Captain who used a geological hole to hide his troops from the British. That’s when the light bulb went off, St. George was not a long lost relative, but rather a place name that actually fit quite nicely with the rest of the research I had done.
Sometimes a name might be a clue, in the picture of the envelope with this post it says Merrick Road. The envelope happens to be date stamped, but if it was not, the road name would tell me that the letter was from sometime prior to 1930 when the names were changed.
The moral of the story is, don’t get hung up on names, there are many factors that show you are on the right path. Just because one does not quite line up does not mean it all should be completely discounted.
Happy searching!!
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