ADVANCED-RESEARCH-L Archives
Archiver > ADVANCED-RESEARCH > 2008-07 > 1215548545
From: <>
Subject: Re: [ADVANRES] Letters that could be misindexed
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:22:25 -0500
References: <002c01c8e10a$85c80560$91581020$@net><001b01c8e123$b732e4d0$6501a8c0@Ralphs><64AC571BC9DF4F2ABDFDC0C3294D0622@nankipoo><00c601c8e12d$b36381c0$01fea8c0@GRAN><4873CB24.9030703@verizon.net>
I wish every database search engine used that Nova Scotia method!!
----- Original Message -----
From: "bob gillis" <>
To: <>
Sent: 08 July, 2008 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [ADVANRES] Letters that could be misindexed
> 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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