The name game ... (tug your ear) ... sounds like?

I think newspaper folks generally make great genealogists.

Trained in the skill of research, instilled with a curiosity and a quest for the truth, and sometimes consumed by a never-give-up attitude, they most often leap ahead of other people in learning the ropes of this peculiar, maddening hobby.

But there is one rule in the newspaper business that drives them crazy when they get into genealogy.

Rule number one in the newspaper business is this: never, never, never misspell a person's name.

In the genealogy world that rule should be rewritten to read thusly: never, never, never expect to see a name spelled the same way twice.

Beginning genealogists and non-genealogists look at you like you're crazy when you first face them with the possibility that their name may appear spelled differently in public records.

"Well, MY name is spelled thus-and-so," they spout at you indignantly. And, indeed, it may well be ... in the present. But our ancestors were faced with an illiteracy problem that is almost nonexistent now, and often the spelling of names was left to the mercy of court clerks and census takers who did their best to spell a name the way it was pronounced if the person who owned the name could not read or write. I have come across some real doozies.

One of the most recent was when I made a major breakthrough in my Wilson family and received a book on the Wilsons loaned to me by a new cousin. My GGgrandfather, William Wren, was married to Martha Wilson of the Heard County Wilsons, and, given the common name of Wilson, I was afraid I'd really have a tough time getting any information on her ancestry.

I was overjoyed when I received the book, and hastily skimmed through it to find the tie to my family. I looked ... and looked ... and finally almost fell off my chair laughing. There it was ... Martha Wilson, daughter of James Wilson and Elizabeth Toler, married to "Billie Rynn." Had I been just starting on this line and had not known about the Wren name, I probably would have driven myself nuts trying to trace the "Rynn" family.

Also in the book were my Wilson girls who married McWhorter boys. "McWhorter" appeared as "McWharted." In other resources I have also seen "McWat(t)er," "McWhirter," "McWhatter," and just about anything else you could imagine. You gotta flex, folks.

Another family history book on the McWhorters has been used extensively as a resource, and the mistakes in it have been perpetuated and appear over and over in family trees on the Internet. One really bad one which could really throw someone off the track is the marriage into the "Noles" family. It appears in the book as "Neles." Again, someone who didn't know would probably drive themselves crazy trying to trace "Neles" or "Neals" and would never make the connection. Even being flexible with the spelling wouldn't help in that case. "Noles" is also seen as "Knowles," a perfectly acceptable spelling variation.

How does this happen? Well, when people write these family history books, they most often write to known relatives (the older the better) and get the names in their family trees. If it is the name of a remote ancestor, the spelling probably has been passed down from an oral history and can be purely hit-or-miss. That was probably the case with my "Rynn."

Another thing that will drive you up a tree is a surname that may, or may not, have an "s" on the end. Right now I'm struggling with several of those: Wood or Woods, Owen or Owens, and Pepper or Peppers. I even got out my magnifying glass trying to read John Pepper's handwritten will to see if the "s" was or was not there. Even that didn't help. You will find that most people just give up (myself included) and write it thusly: Pepper(s).

Surnames aren't the only things that fall victim to the name game. Given names have their problems too. Going back to the McWhorters, three of them were triplets (my mother's great-aunts) named Dolly Ann, Molly Ann and Polly Ann ... at least that's the way the names were spelled in the research papers I inherited from my aunt. I got really lucky on this one. Someone sent me an actual letter written by one of them and she spelled her own name "Dollie Ann." Her sisters were "Mollie Ann" and "Pollie Ann." Well, talk about a primary source! Dollie obviously was very literate if she wrote the letter herself and that was good enough for me. I hastily changed my files to reflect the correct spelling. (The old newspaper blood was racing madly through my veins ... Get it right! Get it right!)

I think the most maddening thing is to find people listed by their nicknames. That is really a groaner. One thing I learned very quickly was that "Polly" or "Molly" was most often the nickname for "Mary" back in the olden days. But what in the heck was the real name of "Sissie?" (One of them turned out to be "Celia.")

One more thing you have to watch out for is transcribed or abstracted records. Some wonderful, hard-working, generous people have taken censuses, marriage records, death records and other official information and transcribed them into book form. But that can lead to double mistakes. One could have been made by the census taker or clerk, and, if the record is old and hard to read, changed once again by the person interpreting the record.

My "Slone" family in the Carroll County census was listed as "Stone." I almost missed them. But thanks to the distinctive name of "Melvina," and the names of children I was familiar with, I zoomed in on the family.

The whole point of this column is to warn you that name variations are the rule rather than the exception in the genealogy world, and flexibility is the key to success. Don't plant your feet in cement and refuse to budge. Open your mind to all the possibilities you can imagine ... if it sounds like it, then it's a possibility. One of them will more than likely be correct.

Next week, I'll tell you about my Wilsons (also seen as Willson and Wilsen) since I have searched the Internet and have not seen the information that is included in the book. It was new for me and took me back two more generations. Maybe it will help someone else too.

Looking for your Georgia ancestors? Got a genealogy tip? Got a local family history to share? Write to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!

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