Newspaper columns were often narrow, forcing long names to be split across two lines. To fit the available space, editors and typesetters inserted hyphens or broke names at the end of a line. While human readers usually recognize the continuation, OCR software may interpret the fragments as separate words, making an otherwise obvious surname difficult—or […]
Author: Kenneth R Marks
Kenneth R Marks was born and educated in the San Francisco Bay Area, receiving a BS in Mathematics in 1968. His career was in Information Technology; with the last 20 Years as a software executive with Boeing, Pearson, and NASA. His genealogy career began in 2004. He is an expert in newspaper research for genealogy, as well as additional genealogy topics. He regularly conducts webinars on the subject and has authored three genealogy books. See the About page for more details.
The Ancestor Hunt, founded in 2008, is focused on helping genealogy and family history researchers of all skill levels to achieve their goals, by providing links to free online genealogy collections, and search tips and techniques, largely via easy-to-understand Quick Reference Guides.
Two people with the same name can quietly become one—and send your research down the wrong family line. Few genealogy mistakes are more common—or more costly—than assuming that two people with the same name must be the same individual. Shared names appear in every place and every time period, especially among common surnames and families […]
Not every name variation found in a newspaper was the result of poor printing, bad handwriting, or OCR errors. Sometimes the individual intentionally used a different name. Actors adopted stage names, authors wrote under pen names, soldiers enlisted under assumed identities, and immigrants occasionally reinvented themselves after arriving in a new country. In other cases, […]
One incorrect family tree can send you and hundreds of other researchers down the wrong path. Online family trees are among the most valuable genealogy resources available—but they are also one of the easiest places to inherit someone else’s mistakes. A tree should be treated as a research clue, not as evidence. Thousands of researchers […]
A woman’s name in the newspaper often depended on the event being reported rather than her legal identity. Social columns, wedding announcements, legal notices, and community news frequently used different naming conventions, making it easy for the same person to appear under multiple names. Researchers who search only one version of a woman’s name may […]
Millions of immigrants arrived with names that were unfamiliar to English-speaking editors, clerks, and readers. Rather than preserving the original spelling, newspapers often translated, shortened, simplified, or anglicized names into forms that seemed more familiar to the local community. As a result, the same person may appear under several different versions of their name depending […]
Ancestry.com continues to add or update its record collections at a fast pace for us to search. For the period of July 1-15, 2026, the new and updated collections are: I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and Happy Hunting!
FamilySearch continues to add or update its record collections at a fast pace for us to search. For the period of July 1-15, 2026, the added/updated collections are: For a complete list of all added/updated collections, go to https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list I hope that some of these are what you have been waiting for! Good Luck and […]
Newspapers were created in a fast-moving environment where information often passed through several hands before reaching print. A reporter might hear a name incorrectly, jot it down hastily in a notebook, and later hand the notes to a typesetter who had never met the person involved. The result was often a perfectly understandable—but incorrect—version of […]
Newspapers were written for local readers who already understood the language, accents, and speech patterns of their community. Reporters often recorded names the way they sounded rather than how they were formally spelled. As families moved from one region to another, accents and pronunciation differences could dramatically change how a surname appeared in print, creating […]