United States—Enlisted and Officer Muster Rolls and Rosters
There is an obvious mistake in this batch. The name is Rdward...... Of course I can't say that this isn't this person actual name, but I will assume it's a mistake since most likely this name should be Edward. I could be wrong. My question is..... If we aren't suppose to fix spelling errors in a name, if I were to index this as Rafter, Rdward, would this record ever be uncovered for this individual? What if his name is actually Edward? I feel that when we find mistakes like this, we should be able to use "or": Rdward or Edward. This may be silly, but this bothers me. I am hoping that someone can enlighten me on how this works for a researcher looking for a possible Edward Rafter.
Batch: M32X-VTQ
Best Answer
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I would be found. The search engine is really good - using Soundex. For instance, my ggf is Jesse but the search finds records that are indexed as Jeffe, Jefse, or Jeff.
Here is a FamilySearch Wiki article about Soundex:
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Answers
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Thank you, Melissa Himes for your very helpful comment and info on Soundex. I, too, used to find it tempting to correct a name, but have not done it. I am grateful that the names we are indexing will be found, in spite of the errors, as you have pointed out. Many thanks, again.
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