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Archiver > ADVANCED-RESEARCH > 2008-07 > 1215548196


From: bob gillis <>
Subject: Re: [ADVANRES] Letters that could be misindexed
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:16:36 -0400
References: <002c01c8e10a$85c80560$91581020$@net><001b01c8e123$b732e4d0$6501a8c0@Ralphs><64AC571BC9DF4F2ABDFDC0C3294D0622@nankipoo><00c601c8e12d$b36381c0$01fea8c0@GRAN>
In-Reply-To: <00c601c8e12d$b36381c0$01fea8c0@GRAN>


wrote:
> I just found Meinhard(t) Kleiminger and his family in the 1870 census
> at Ancestry.com, after my networking group has searched for quite a
> while. Meinhardt was the only one of the children born in New York.
> We knew that from the 1860 and 1880 censuses.
>
> I searched Cook County, Illinois, for a white male born 1855 in New
> York, not using a name. He was indexed Minhard Tleimenter. With the
> first letter wrong, Soundex would never have found it. Even if the
> first letter had been right, the t instead of g would have prevented
> Soundex from finding it. I had used Klei* and Klei**, also starting
> with C.

Soundex is not a very good method for finding surnames. There are other
much better search algorithms.

The Nova Scotia Historical Vital Records uses a search for both given
and surnames with exactly, contains, starts with and ends with. With a
bit of trying that system would have found your person: Given contains
Hard and surname ends with nger.

bob gillis

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