Briana’s Genealogical Journey Pt. 3: Names and Spelling

Over the last month of working on my genealogical research, I’ve learned that names and spelling in various records are often inconsistent. This can make determining the “correct” way to spell someone’s name a bit tricky. Spelling was not taken as seriously 100 years ago as it is now, and literacy rates were lower than they are today. I remember reading somewhere that spelling a name phonetically was often more important than spelling it “correctly,” because for people with differing reading abilities, being able to pronounce the name was more important than being able to write it. 

To make a genealogist’s work even harder, sometimes handwriting on old documents is hard to read, and scanned images might be blurry. These challenges can cause transcription errors when a document is digitized, as seen in this example from Ancestry.com:

Source: AncestryInstitution.com, accessed from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Of course I know that my paternal grandmother went by the name Sadie, but the person who transcribed this document did not know that and misread her name as “Sapie.” This mistake is pretty obvious, but other inconsistencies can be more confusing. 

A middle initial was enough to throw me off while continuing from my last post and looking for documents related to my maternal grandfather, Francis “Sparky” Martin. During my search I came across a 1930 census record that possibly includes old Sparky’s name. However, the middle initial listed on the census record does not match what is written on my grandfather’s obituary. 

Source: Newsbank.com, America's Obituaries & Death Notices, accessed through the Free Library of Philadelphia

Source: FamilySearch.org

As you can see, the obituary names “Francis T. Martin,” but the census record lists “J.” as the middle initial. At first I assumed this Francis J. Martin mustn’t be my ancestor, despite having the same birth year and residency in Summit, New Jersey (where I know my grandfather lived for many years). But I took a second look at the census record and noticed Francis’s brother, Henry. I vaguely remember my mom talking about her uncle Henry, so now I feel there are too many coincidences here for this census record to not be naming my grandfather. The problem–and I’m embarrassed to admit this–is that I don’t remember my grandfather’s middle name, so I don’t know which record has the correct initial.

The easiest solution is to ask my mom for her dad’s middle name the next time I talk to her–bonus points if I can gather other information about Francis and his brother. I plan to dedicate my next post to navigating the task of asking living family members about their history; Sometimes this task isn’t as simple as it sounds. So I’ll leave this post with a “To Be Continued” and follow up next time with a consensus on the middle initial question, and perhaps some other ancestors to talk about.