I do geneology, and maybe I can shed a little light on the subject.

[Michael Weatherhead]

I know that when we get started in geneology, we tend to get hung up on two things: #1: The various spellings of surnames, and #2: varying dates (birth, death, etc). We need to understand, that various entities (government census, death records indexes, newspaper memorials, etc) can get things wrong. Census takers, for instance, can only write down what they thought they heard someone say. I have a female french ancestor, and the three spellings of her surname, were St. Pierre, Sampier, and Sampeer. It really confused me, because all the other info (husband, children, etc) was the same. Then I figured it out. Ask any frenchie to pronounce St. Pierre. They don't say it the way you or I would, they would pronounce it "San Pierre."--right?! So, a non-french speaking census worker (this was a Canadian census) enters her home, asks for her surname, hears her pronounce St. Pierre, and writes what he or she hears. This happened several times with my ancestors.

The other thing that is often different, is people's birthdates. My neighbor has been a census worker, and she's an avid geneologist. I asked her how the names and dates can be so different. She explained about the writing the name like you hear it (not allowed to ask for spelling), but also, when they ask how old someone is, they write that down. Then, they use that age, to guesstimate the year of birth. So if Johnny is 7, did he just turn 7, is he almost 7, did he turn 7, 9 months ago, is he almost 8? We don't know. So, when the worker writes Johnny's birthyear, (they didn't always do this), they'll often put "About 1877," or "approx 1877," for example. Not only census workers get these things wrong, but so do other entities, even geneology websites. Also, these are my three favorite sites to use: FamilySearch.org. Owned/operated by the LDS Church, but free to everybody. Has access to MEGA records, and with the click of the mouse, enters them in your family tree. The others are Ancestry.com (a paid site), and FindaGrave.com. This one is cool, allows you to search gravesites, often includes the memorial, of the person. Also links you to spouses, and children. This site is free.