18 October 2012

One More Variant for Trautvetter

Just when you think you've seen about every variant for a last name, the "last name variant committee" releases a new one.

That's the case for Trautvetter--Beckretter.


It is not too difficult to see how this happened when one looks at the original image:



It can be easy to blame Ancestry.com for these errors (and Ancestry.com does make errors), but in this case it's easy to see why they thought what they did. I see that name and I think "Trautvetter," but that is because it's from the 1880 agricultural census for Walker Township, Hancock County, Illinois, and I'm reasonably familiar with the last names in that area.

"Errors" aren't always Ancestry.com's fault--sometimes it's the original record.