NH NH - Allenstown, Adult Female & 3 Children, found Nov 1985 & May 2000 #3

On one of the facebook groups the detective said the documentary was going to include more information on potential orange county victims, but I didn't see that at all. Am I missing something?

 

I haven’t finished it yet but so far I haven’t heard anything about Orange Co..

 

Didn't mean to imply there was anything particularly significant about the NH and Toronto descendants, it was more a comment on the fact that the descendants are widespread and the ones living in more northern areas such as Oregon, Chicago, the Great Lakes etc make me think of the comments about isotopes even when they are not reflected on the maps originally released.

 

I am sure there is a better term for what I am describing , but i have a quick question for the genealogy folks. How common are name variations? Is it possible for a last name to drop a letter, swap out a letter or add a letter over time.. Livings becoming Living or Loving or Lovings or ?
In what I believe to be my tree- sometimes we dropped a letter or added an e to the end in the distant past. I saw that on the census records. Same names & place etc Idk if that was because they were never taught to read & write properly or it was recorded wrong. I have no idea.
Can you all elaborate on this particular issue as it relates to the genealogy of the last unidentified child.

(my poor cell phone had the hardest time allowing me to add those name variations lol)

 

Oh, my goodness, this is my experience so far while researching this family line. I've come across the adding or dropping of an "s" on the end of the last name so many times, even within a sibling group. I'm not sure if it's the person having a personal preference for the addition/subtraction, or if it's transcription errors. People were always adding an "s" on the end of my name growing up, not sure why. So I'm sure there are records out there with my name wrong.
On the census, I wonder if members of the household are illiterate and can't spell or write, so the census taker can't understand what they're being told and spelled it the best they can. For one name, I found 4 different spellings on different censuses & genealogy databases. First names spelling issues, too. There's one first name which popped up which no one in the history of the world has ever had that I can find in any database or modern internet search.
What I end up doing is looking at other dates, like death/birth dates, where the person is from, where they died, alternate name spellings, to determine if it's the same person.

 

Agreed with Alleykins on this.

For Livings, don't dismiss Livingston, Linning(s,) even Havens too Billings too quickly.

Keep in mind that when handwritten documents are typed in by agencies, errors creep in. Scanning can be worse, although this does make documents available.

Visual errors, auditory errors, transcription errors, eventually you'll find them all.

In my tree three siblings were married in the same county within 4 years. Granted, handwriting was more uniform in this time, but in the same handwriting their mother's maiden name was spelled 3 different ways! Looking at the name, most people would pronounce each version the same way.

Sometimes this happens when people move to a different area. Acadian/Cajun surnames that would spelled correctly in Louisiana are mangled in other areas for example.

If something like Soundex is available, the system will automatically return results in this category -- names that are similar & could be confused.

And, please, if you find a likely individual -- check the page before & after for more candidates. Whether you're looking in a city directory or a census, the people you're looking for probably lived close together. They had front porches and church groups, no Facebook or dating apps.

Keep looking!

 

I should also say I'm relatively new to genealogical research and my efforts would surely make my great aunt cringe. But I think she would applaud my attempts.

 

My ancestors, a married couple, had their names spelled differently on the ship manifest from their journey over. Married couple with the same last name on the same ship at the same time and the last name was spelled differently. Genealogy can be just so fun like that!

 

Yes, I found one Livings listed as Livingston, and I think Levings or Lovings on one census.

 

How common? Super common. Our ancestors didn't care so much about spelling. Or how old they were! But also, sometimes census-takers could easily just misunderstand someone, or be less familiar with some ethnic names and spelled them kind of creatively. Some people intentionally Americanized names - during World War I, my ancestors changed their surname to sound less German and more British since anti-German sentiment was obviously strong. And even now, some old documents were often written in an older cursive hand that may cause them to be misinterpreted and mixindexed by transcribers today, even if they were actually recorded correctly!

But, these are problems that genealogists are very aware of and used to working around. Genealogists who are experts in a certain region may even know in advance of some of the more common nicknames or alternate spellings and proactively look for those. And a lot of the software used for searching allows for things like that to be taken into account, setting wider age parameters, searching for similar names, etc.

 

Just to give a better example of what I'm talking about above, I've done a lot of research in southern Ireland. If you came to me and wanted to find more about your ancestor and you only knew he immigrated to Boston and his name was Jeremiah Minogue, his wife was Ellen and his kids were Mary, Lawrence, James, and John. I'm not just going to look for that name, Jeremiah Minogue. I'm also going to look for Darby, which was a common Irish diminutive for Jeremiah. I'm also going to look for Mannix, which was an earlier variant of the surname Minogue. So even if he's in records as what would seem to be a completely other name - Darby Mannix, I'll probably still be able to find him and match him up with the names of the wife/children you gave me, or with DNA or whatever it is that we're working with to verify that he is in fact your ancestor.

 

Thank you so much! I would never in my wildest dreams be able to come up with Darby Mannix from the name Jeremiah Minogue. Thank you @Irish_Eyes I am impressed. We always draw blanks in our own research and now I understand why.

 

No problem. Here if you ever need help as well.

 

OH and keep in mind

Minnow
Meno
Meanoe

you get the idea

 

I do. Thank you @Laughing

 

Too many posts to quote, but while doing my tree I learned very quickly how census takers back then wrote what they heard and didn't ask for spelling clarifications. My great grandmother's name was Asora, but in all but one of the censuses, her name was put as Sarah/Sara. Confused the heck out of me as I was so new to it! It made me question that I had the correct name for her, especially as it was so unique! I was eventually able to confirm through her burial records and birth certificate that it is Asora.

Although, you can't always confirm through death certificates either. My grandfather was Bernard, but my grandmother gave his nickname Barney for the death certificate. But Bernard is on his headstone and birth certificate.
Varied spellings for last names are even more common, Schwartz, Swartz, etc

 

I'm trying to build this tree out a little at a time. It's slow going. Every now and then I think I've found something and then it doesn't pan out. I was really excited about something yesterday that I now think is probably just a typo. Sigh.

I also took the opportunity to run down Janis Bullock's ancestry. I feel pretty confident she is not the mother of MC.

 

My great grandmother was illiterate, and misspelled her mother-in-law's name on my gr grandfather's death certificate. Guggenheim became Guckenhine, or something like that. Sadly, we're not descended from the rich ones.

 

I actually received pictures of the pictures in my grandmothers collection after her passing. One picture has a person I've never seen with the last name Livings. I cannot figure out how this person fits into our family or if they're just a friend of theirs. We are from Georgia- Effingham County, I know they traveled in N.C. & North Ga, & back in the 40"s & 50's my grandparents moved around a bit for his work in the southeast. I will get some clarity from an older family member. But maybe some of them are there? Wild leap there but I found the name to be odd in her collection. I know Effingham co. Was early days for my granmothet, I will find out where all it could've been taken for the period.

 

William Livings was from Georgia and had some descendants who either stayed or returned there. If you want to message me the name I can check it against what I've found so far.