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Guidelines For Entry of Problem Names

Many times, names have been difficult to decipher. Other times, the document itself has been damaged in various ways that impacted our ability to read the information. Several methods have been employed to indicate to the reader when we had difficulty. They are as follows:

1. When a surname has been difficult to determine and could be read alternately, we have indicated this by using two and sometimes three possibilities. For example, Rud or Ried. For your convenience we have made separate entries for each possibility: Rud or Ried and Ried or Rud. We encourage individuals to go to the original source and make a determination for themselves if the name is important for their research. For given names, we will also indicate more than one possibility, but will not make separate entries for each one.
2. When an undetermined number of letters were unreadable, we used the ellipsis “. . .” in place of the letters we could not decipher, while we included those characters we could read. For example: Cr . . . [surname] and . . . seph [given name]. It would be difficult to determine the surname with confidence, but the given name is most likely “Joseph”.
3. When a known number of characters could not be read, an asterisk “*” was used in place of each letter we could not decipher. Often the name can be determined based on where the asterisk is placed. For example, with Brow* one can readily determine the name is most likely Brown. However, when one or more asterisks are placed at the beginning of a name, the possibilities become more numerous and therefore difficult to determine.
4. When we were unsure about the reading, we would include a question mark “?” after the name.
5. Sometimes we could not read the name because the writing was too faint, it was covered with ink blotches, portions of the document was damaged/missing, or for many other reasons. We tried to indicate this when we felt a name was there by using “[Unreadable]”, “[Missing]”, “[Illegible]”, “[Name crossed out]”, etc., in place of the name. In some cases, a name might be read by examining carefully the original document. If individuals are successful in deciphering the name, the compilers would appreciate receiving feedback from them indicating what the name should be. If there is agreement, a change could be made to the entry that is on our website: www.censustrail.com which will benefit everyone.
6. When the first letter was obviously wrong and would interfere in a researcher’s ability to readily see the name, we have placed in brackets what we thought the name should be along with the spelling of the name in the original. One can use the search feature on the Internet to find these names. An example is Knewkurk [Newkirk], Richard. A researcher might never know to look under the spelling Knewkurk and therefore miss potentially vital information. By searching for the name Newkirk, one would find this entry.
7. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which is the given name and which is the surname. When there has been doubt about the proper order of given name/surname, we have made an entry such as: Everet or Jones, [surname], and Jones or Everet [given name]. Then we have made another entry with the names reversed such as Jones or Everet [surname], and Everet or Jones [given name].

When deciphering entries, we have always tried to err on the side of reasonable, known, practical, and possible names rather than unreasonable, impossible, or impractical spellings.