Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Spelling don't count, even IF it is in stone

In the search of the Elusive Ella, which I will chat about some time, but not now, Cousin Reb, was looking at every Trumbo she could find at Ancestry.com. So far, Ella is still elusive, but, it got me to thinking - - - -

Spelling don't count, however, in some search engines, you can use a wild card feature, most search engines require that you type in 3 letters first, then wild card. This works quite well, most of the time, but not so well if the 3rd letter is a vowel. So, what I do when the 3rd letter is a vowel is to search every spelling possible by changing the vowel. First I search with what we consider to be the normal spelling. Then, I switch vowels, so, Trumbo would become Trambo, then Trembo, and so forth. It is quite surprising what I find that way. Found Man's grandmother's birth that way, after looking for 3 years, again, another story, another time.

I was gonna drop Cousin Reb a email and ask her if she had searched that way, when I remembered Zachariah, one of my Trumbos. Zachariah Z. Trumbo is my g g grandfather. He is buried out in Joplin County Missouri. I believe that it was Cousin Reb that got me a photo of his headstone.

Let me tell you, not sure even my tricks of changing vowels would work for ole Zach, proof positive that spelling don't count, even IF it is inscribed in stone.

Got to love it, Z. Z. Treembo.

*I even have a theory of how this happened, whomever ordered the stone wrote Trumbo with the "U" having loops, the cursive "U" now becomes a double "E".

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