Cook County Illinois birth records for 1927-1931 show different spellings of maternal maiden name
Hello, I am a new user. I am seeing that a certain user created or linked my grandmother using resources that have many different spellings of her maiden name. It doesn't help that US Census kept botching the spelling of that name in their entries, even providing different spellings for the maiden name of my grandmother and her mother's last name when they were both in the house! *But how could the birth records in the database for my father and two uncles in Cook County Illinois have differing maiden names for the same mother? Am I seeing the actual birth certificate info when I see those differing mother maiden name spellings?* Presmont, Presinont, yikes! The 3 sons were born 1927, 1929 and 1931. I'm a newbie and would appreciate advice for researching these birth data names.
Best Answers
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Welcome! You state "It doesn't show images for the birth certificates of my father or uncles." Since you are just starting out, this is a great time to learn some basic principles about using online records. Two very important ones are:
- Never, never trust an index. (I'd underline this if I could.)
- If you have not seen the original record, you have no idea what it really says.
Now most indexes do strive to be of high quality, but you have to keep in mind that even around 1930, the records are almost certain to be handwritten, potentially faded, or otherwise hard to read. So transcription errors do occur.
To look at your specific example of transcribed from handwritten, blurry, faded, wrinkled documents written by different people and transcribed by different people:
- Presmont
- Presinont
The only difference is "m" vs "i n." Have you ever seen this style of handwriting?
My mother-in-law wrote "m" and "n" like that with just a little more rounding. Her "u" looked just like her "n". You pretty well had to guess from the context what she was writing. Picture the difference between an "m" and an "in." Then picture the effect of one potentially invisible dot of ink on the page vs. one speck of dust on the camera lens creating a dot that really isn't there.
A third principle to keep in mind when searching for records is that the farther back in time you go, the less consistency there will be in spelling, even back just a few decades. Standardized spelling is a very modern concept. You just can't worry about differences. Back a hundred years no one would blink twice at a person spelling his name Christopher, Kristopher, Kristofer, or Kristoffer depending on the day.
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And you can obtain those images, free, from the Remote Lookup Service or by visiting your Affiliate Library or Family History Center. I pulled several Cook County birth certificates just yesterday at my local public library, an Affiliate.
New Library Lookup Service at the Family History Library • FamilySearch
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First of all, don't get stuck on spelling. There are many possible reasons for a name to be spelled differently in different places; it doesn't necessarily mean it's a different person. (Just as having exactly the same spelling doesn't guarantee that it's the same person.) Basically, when you encounter a record or a profile, you have to assess all of the clues available to you, and make a judgement based on them: is this the person I'm talking about, or someone else?
How you fix an error depends on your assessment of the intentions behind a profile: if you think it was intended to be Person A, but got some details like name spelling or birthplace wrong, then you can change those details to the correct ones for Person A. If you think the profile is actually meant to be Person B, but has been given Person A's relationships, then you should edit the relationships, not the profile itself.
Of course, in real life, things are often rather fuzzy. If someone created a profile and stuck it in the position where Person A belongs, but got the name wrong, should you change the name or detach the profile? It's hard to judge intentions when there are minimal clues. Messaging the person who made the error can help, but this depends on that person receiving and responding to your message, which can take a while. (Not everyone wants instant notification about FS messages, and if the edit was made a while ago, the contact methods involved may have gone stale.)
Whatever decisions you make, if your intentions are good -- a more accurate and more complete Tree -- then you don't need to worry about stepping on toes: every change in Family Tree is tracked, and every error can be fixed.
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And don't forget! Document everything. Put notes as to why you made the edits you did. Add every possible source.
When possible it also really helps to improve the other person's family as well. For example, if someone confused your grandmother with her grandmother, don't just remove your grandmother from her, but try and figure out who her grandmother was and create a profile for her with plenty of sources.
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Here is what I would suggest (please take note of the difficult to read gentle joking and smiles).
1) Remove the term "misspelled" from your vocabulary. "Correct" spelling is a very modern concept. You just have to accept that variant spelling is the norm.
2) Decide how you are going to spell her name in Family Tree. Some people use whatever is in the birth record. Some people use what the current family has always viewed as correct. Some people glue all the names to a target and throw darts.
3) Pick which record you are going to have for your final single record for her. This will usually be the one that currently has the most information on it. Edit her name there to be as you are going to spell it.
4) Put all major spelling variants as Alternate Names under Other Information, unless they are so far off base that you can blame it on an impaired recorder. (See: http://www.ancestryinsider.org/2014/12/beware-accuracy-of-darned-census.html )
5) Start merging. Carefully and fully documenting and sourcing along the way.
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I concur with Gordon's suggestions and especially #1. For one of my families, I have documented, so far, 10 variant spellings. My 2nd great grandfather was literate and a native speaker of English. In documenting the family, I use the surname as he spelled it on 2 documents he signed in the 1850s.
On my 2nd great grandmother's 1882 death certificate, that same surname is spelled multiple ways within that one document.
I recently was helping someone with 20th-century research, also Cook County, Illinois. The mother was born in Hungary, and her surname was spelled in a different way on each Cook birth certificate for her 4 children. And that same surname had been spelled in multiple different ways on the baptismal records for her and her siblings in Hungary.
Among family history researchers, we often say "Spelling doesn't count." It's one of the reasons that genealogy websites usually give us multiple wildcard options for searching.
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Answers
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Do you know if your grandmother and great grandmother were literate? If not, the doctor or midwife completing the birth record would have spelled the names as they sounded. Same for the census taker - he or she would have written the name as it sounded.
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Good question! Thank you so much for replying. I am sure that the overloaded census workers approximated what they heard and am not too surprised at the differing spellings from those events. My great grandmother and great grandfather did come from Russia, but no matter what their name was before coming to America, they had papers after their arrival that would have spelled an Americanized last name a certain way. But, this is Cook County birth data MY grandmother provided, and she and my grandfather were literate. They were well off when they married and he was president of companies and traveled around the world. She was a Chicago socialite. It is extremely unlikely she would have provided the differing spellings of her maiden name on her children's birth certificates. So, is what I am seeing on the Cook County Illinois birth records on familysearch.org correct birth certificate data, or has someone link the wrong people to my family based upon supposed spellings? How would I find this out? It doesn't show images for the birth certificates of my father or uncles. Please help me logic my way through that discrepancy and help me search better.
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Have you seen the birth record (the image of the certificate) or only the index? Different transcribers may interpret a name different from what was written, depending on the handwriting.
She may not have been asked to spell the name. The midwife or doctor or nurse may have written without asking, and the handwriting may not be clear.
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Aine and Gordon, SO helpful, thank you! The modern generational, family-defined spelling of the maiden name is Presiment. Not trusting the indexes is FABULOUS advice. So now I can extrapolate that someone named Taylor Satterthwaite has gone in and created and linked people profiles with the wrong last names to my grandmother and her children. Now I guess once I get the recorded spelling of the last name from my father's birth certificate, which I did through https://www.familysearch.org/en/family-history-library/family-history-library-records-look-up-service, I can start detaching the wrong people, then maybe I can better find, create, or merge/correct the Satterthwaite-created people profiles for my grandmother to be the correct one. I've messaged Taylor Satterthwaite to ask what their role was in linking my familial records and have not heard back. **NOW my question is, what are considerations for respectfully correcting profiles and linking people.** I suspect it's far more considerate to detach wrong profiles and put in a note stating it is NOT the profile for Lillian Presiment, wife of Benjamin, rather than merging or correcting last name spellings. But I am not sure. In what circumstance would you correct the last name of a record -- when you are very sure that it is the correct person? For the US Census record that has the wrong last name, should I correct the person profile last name spelling, since I know it is my people? What's the best practices for all this? Thank you so much!
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Everyone is so helpful and I am learning a lot. I would like to follow the advice and work on some other aspects while I wait for the birth certificate images to arrive from the research department. I will be able to correct the birth certificate data linking supplied by the Cook County database source at that point. Then I can make the decisions on who (which Lillian) should be linked. I will err on the side of caution by detaching the wrong record rather than merging, and if necessary, create a new record with the correct spelling, years of birth and death, and links to family members. I will add notes and will need to decide what to do. I really wish I would hear back from Taylor Satterthwaite, that would enable me to forge ahead in the right way and with confidence. I will do a graph to see who these other Lillians are linked to. If the worst thing that happens is that Taylor's various persons who are supposed to be my grandmother end up being "online orphans" detached from my family tree (but available for other trees) and the right Lillian is linked to our family tree, that is not too bad. At least those Lillians will not have been clobbered by me and they will have notes expressing the misspelling and correct person to check out. Maybe those Lillians belong to another family and not mine. I will definitely correct the US Census linking. Copious notes will help when I take any action. Wish me luck and THANK YOU ALL. If I have questions in this process I would like to post it under this thread rather than start a new one. I hope that is okay.
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Have you received those birth records? I went to my affiliate library this afternoon, and I've downloaded those 3 birth records, in case you haven't received them yet.
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I did! Familysearch.org was correct in what was recorded on the birth certificates, the maiden names on them are misspelled, all differently. So, now there are separate Lillian P. profiles for 3 misspelled birth certificates, and a couple of misspelled maiden names on Census records. They are all the same person. How do you suggest I proceed in cleaning up the separate profiles into one person? I know I will need to note the citations and erroneous spellings in notes. What is my next step to start the cleanup?
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Thank you! I do believe that, as warned early on, the Eastern European handwriting was part of the problem. I saw an image of the military registration papers for my g-grandfather, he spelled it correctly but two of the letters looked like one of the "variant" versions. So, between the European accents the Census workers encountered and the handwriting issues, and the wonderful responses here, I now know to take the records that have sources attached and graph out a strategy for notating and merging profiles. I know these are the same person because my grandfather is always attached to my variously-spelled grandmother via verified sources. I am going to end up with the spelling my 90-year-old uncle and the rest of us know to be correct, and will provide the other variant spellings in the field suggested.
I'm CLEANING HOUSE, PEOPLE! I'm taking names and naming sources. Thank you for helping me correct our data.
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