Catfish Tips No. 2- What the $%@$R$ is Soundex?
I have fielded a number of questions through the years of what, how, and why of Soundex in searching for ancestors. First the what ... In wikispeak it is defined as follows: Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. As far as history, it was developed early in the 20th century, and one of its early applications was for indexing census records. This became a major WPA project, and became a great aid to government, especially in the post social security era, for finding and proving age in the pre-birth certificate era (i.e before 1914, but varies by state). In the pre-computer era of genealogical research (including myself), pretty much everyone knew their ancestors surname soundex codes. If you are curious, the second section of the wikipedia entry gives you the details and instructions of how to construct.
Now some good news, almost all the major commercial and free databases for genealogical research have the algorithm built in for searches. Not only for census records, but for pretty much any search. Why is this important you may ask. In our present day, precise spelling of our names is customary, and expected. Back in older days, how the names were pronounced often held more importance than the spelling. In fact, I have seen some of my 19th century ancestors sign their name with different spelling. By using this algorithm in your searches, it will improve your ability to find appropriate matches.
Happing Hunting........[/size][/size]