Have you hit a stumbling block in your search for ancestors? Is the given (last) name you're looking for one that could be easily spelled differently in another language? Try varying the spelling of the given name you are researching sometimes it can make a world of difference.

For example, we were researching the name "Lesh", but couldn't find anything. Until one day, after scanning some of the Ancestry.com forums, we noticed a German spelling of the name Loesch and the flood gates opened so much so that we found ancestors back to the Revolutionary War, which helped to prove our rights to membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. You can also use the name "Shrader" as an example, which has multiple spellings Schrader, Schraeder, Schroeder, etc.

Sowhy did these names change from generation-to-generation?

One reason can be attributed to immigrants themselves. They made a conscious decision when arriving in America that they were going to simplify their name, give it a more "American" spelling, or maybe they wanted to distance themselves from a troubled past.

Another, and equally prevalent, reason was due to record keeping. We haven't always lived in the age of computers and immigration records were not always 100% accurate. Not because the immigrant officer at Ellis Island was lazy, but because they were trying to process as many people as possible and they would spell names phonetically and, if you've ever studied a foreign language, you know letter combinations in one language were usually trimmed to a single letter sound in "American" English. For example, 'ae' could turn into an 'a', an 'ei' into an 'i' or 'sch' into 'sh', especially with German names.

Another common problem with records of the time, and census records are another good example of this, is the flowery, and sometimes, illegible handwriting that would cause people to guess at how a name was spelled, which could lead to, though surely unintentional, spelling errors.

As if spelling changes weren't enough, some people wouldn't record their formal names consistently. For example, we were reviewing census records and found a person had recorded their name three different ways. Once with a full first and last name, but no middle; another with a full first and last name and a middle initial; and lastly, we found another record with first and middle initials and a full last name.

So The bottom line when researching your ancestors is to keep an open mind and make sure to try all of the possibilities (no matter how strange they might seem). You never know what you're going to find!!