Who When Where

At the moment I’m working on an Ashby tree and am amazed at how many variants have cropped up. First, the problem of a lack of consistent spelling on original documents - my great grandmother wrote her own surname three different ways on the 1911 census - so I have to take Ashbey, Ashbee and Ashbe, Asbee, Ashby, Asbe amongst others into account. But transcriptions have been a real source of frustration - ahshby, Ashley, Ahsley, Ishley to name but a few. Most picked up by knowing a spouse otherwise they might never have been found.

I’m sure I’m not alone - how do others factor this into their searches? I know we shouldn’t rely on indexes but they are a starting point for most of us, particularly in the current pandemic. When a search comes up empty how can you be confident it’s really not there rather than it’s been wrongly transcribed?

If the site you are using I would use wildcards then I would employ the following search possibilities eg Ash* or As* or any the first couple of letters of any variation you have found to date.

I has a similar problem yesterday, looking for william downing in 1881. I had him in 1871, his marriage in 1873, and 1891 cesnsus, all within a few miles in Southwark, so reasoned he would still be there or thereabouts in 1881. Broadly searching for his wife emma elizabeth (no surname) threw up too many results, so tried Emma D*, still too many then tried Emma Do*. At last a manageable number to check. Scanning through the results, I spotted an Emma Doconing! Quick check and there they were, william, his wife emma and daughter emma.

The transcriber had made a reasonable guess at the ambiguosly written surname, and came up with Doconing. It was only because I knew the correct surname that I see it could also be read as Downing. So it pays to search broadly at first then slowly narrow down the search criteria!

The best I have found so far during my research, was a mistranscription of Jemima Rothery. She was transcribed as Jennings Korbury (is that a real name?) No amount of wild cards would find that one!

Sometimes you just have to be creative with your searches. On Ancestry you select "similar" and "sounds like" and "soundex". Not sure if you can filter searches on FMP, but by selecting "name variants", it tends to throw up a variety of spelling variations.
Mick, how did you find that one?

It was a while ago, so don’t remember the exact details, but it is possible she was at same address as a previous census (something always worth checking)!

Ann, I have similar problems with my Rothery ancestors. Some of the names use are Rothery, Rotherey, Rotheray, Rothera etc. I became wise to this fairly early on, and nowadays, generally use Rother* or even Roth* in searches

It is often repeated that an unusual surname is easier to research. However how the surname is often misheard and recorded wrongly, or mistranscribed is another matter.

Indeed, my gt Grandmother's maiden name was Conduct. I couldn't tell you the number of different spellings I have come across for this Family including ? and ! inserted for letters, and some are downright rude!!

Even happens today! People ask me name, which I spell out for them, and they still insist on adding an extra o