Common Mistakes in Genealogy Research #1

One of the most common mistakes people make when researching their family histories, is assuming that their family name is only spelt one way and discard records and information which include variations to the spelling of the surname.

In an earlier post I have talked about the variations of my grandmother's surname, McCluskey - these included the variations of McClusky, McLusky and even McListy. While the first two variations are quite obvious, I ignored the McListy variation for some time... then one day I looked further into the information these records held and had enough corroborating evidence to know that it was my grandmother's family in those records. 

If I had totally ignored this variation, there is one whole branch of my grandmother's family that I would never have known about. I am still waiting patiently for the release of the 1911 Scottish Census and it will be interesting to see what variation of the name pops up there.

Variations of surnames turn up everywhere in my family tree - even my maternal grandmother's surname has two variations - Barratt and Barrett. I have yet to find any other variations, but I am also struggling to get past my great great great grandfather in that line, so perhaps I need to be widening my search to include other variations.

So, if you are stuck on a part of your tree and nothing seems to be coming up in any of your searches, perhaps you need to expand to other variations of spelling - this might just hold the key to the next branch of your family tree.