Does Ancestry.com Think Troutvetter Does Not Sound Like Troutfetter?

Some names are made for “unexact” searches or the use of wildcards. Trautvetter is one of those names.

I was reviewing probate records for members of the Trautvetter family using the “Illinois, Wills and Probate Records, 1772-1999” at Ancestry.com. Because the name gets spelled a variety of ways, I searched for troutvetter with the search slider set to “exact, sounds like and similar.” I obtained ten matches.

troutvetter-illinois-probate

In reviewing those items (partially shown in the first image), I realized there were no results for the Michael Trautvetter who died in 1869. I knew he had a probate as I had used the records before. I knew they were online as I had used them at Ancestry.com before. Why wasn’t my search locating them?

I decided to search for troutfetter instead with the slider set to “exact, sounds like and similar.” Sure enough there were the entries for Adam and Michael Troutfetter.

troutfetter-illinois-probate

But the search apparently is not working correctly–or at least not the way I think it should. Troutfetter and Troutvetter do sound very much alike.

Why doesn’t the “sounds like” setting bring them both up? I should not have to search for them separately.

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4 thoughts on “Does Ancestry.com Think Troutvetter Does Not Sound Like Troutfetter?

  1. Rather than using Ancestry’s sound like, you might find using wild cards more effective. Using Tr*t*tter will give you
    Trautvetter
    Trantoetter
    Troutfetter
    Trantvetter
    Trantfetter
    Trautfetter
    Frantreller
    Traetvetter
    Tratfetter
    Trautretter
    Treuttetter
    Troutfoetter
    Trontfetter

    And possibly some other variations as well – I only looked through a few pages of results in the Convict, Criminal, Land & Wills category

    • That’s a good idea–and I usually search in that way, although the Tr*t*tter won’t catch the options with the “l”s…at least not if the search is set to exact. My concern was that the “sounds like” option really should have caught them in one search.

  2. http://en.geneanet.org gives many many results for Trautvetter. I have found this to be an invaluable site for European research. If you haven’t searched here yet, it may be worth your while. I only put Trautvetter into the search engine and it produced 962 results. And 780 results from various documents in several languages.

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