By Kimberly Brown, Family Historian Prolific American novelist
Mark Twain is quoted as having said, “I don't give a damn for a
man that can only spell a word one way.” Those of us researching
our family trees can all understand what he meant. Noah
Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language was
published in 1828, but spelling wasn't entirely standardized by
then. Lower literacy rates and non-standardized English made for
what Mark Twain may have called "creative" spelling. The
spelling of surnames continued to be especially flexible. Good
genealogists understand the importance of using spelling
variations when searching for ancestors. Some name variations,
such as Thomson and Thompson, or Hanson and Hansen, are obvious.
Others are more far-fetched and difficult to guess. Instead of
scratching your head and trying to come up with variations, you
can try searching by Soundex. In the 1930s the Works Progress
Administration began indexing census records by Soundex, a code
based on the way names sound