How Do You Spell That?
Genealogy research is never easy, and when a surname can be spelled in many ways, it can make it even tougher. However, one can make it even harder if only one spelling of the name is researched. My grandmother started me on that road back when I first began researching her family line. Her mother’s name was Lela Ann Loveless. She was very insistent that it was spelled with LESS at the end and not LACE. It did not take me long to discover that her ancestors were listed in records under all kinds of spellings: Loveless, Lovelace, Loveliss, etc. I wrote about this name previously here . Recordkeepers wrote down the name as they heard it. It really depended on the education of the recordkeeper. Sometimes these misspellings can indicate how a person pronounced the name. Lela Ann was listed in the 1900 census as “Leelar” which clearly indicates the pronunciation of her name in an Arkansas accent. I can just hear my grandmother say my mother’s name, also Lela, in the same manner. On my...