I really hope that I’m doing something wrong.
A search for the last name of Trautvetter in “All Kansas, City and County Census Records, 1919-1961” at Ancestry.com with the “Exact, sounds like, similar & soundex” checked brought no matches. Not one. This was something of a surprise as I knew that descendants of Christian Troutfetter were still living in Kansas during that time period. I was also pretty certain that Trautvetter and Troutfetter sounded alike.
I even double checked to make certain I had the “Exact, sounds like, similar & soundex” checked. I did. The “Match all terms exactly” box in the upper left hand corner can be checked as that’s supposed to tell the search to only give me what I ask for (in this case the spelling variants) and not names like Tardassian or something equally inane.
But it should give me Troutfetter–Trautvetter and Troutferrer do sound alike and they are Soundex equivalent (T631). But I still got no results.
The only way to get the “Troutfetter” results was to search for Troutfetter.
But if the “Exact, sounds like, similar & soundex” option is checked, searching for “Trautvetter” should bring about “Troutfetter.”
Or am I doing something wrong?
Or do Trautvetter and Troutfetter not sound alike in Kansas?
6 Responses
I had the same problem with my 2X great grandfather, George W. Baker. I will go back and try a few more variations, and search for other associated people. Fingers crossed!
Perhaps the indexer read the T as an F.
Sometimes that happens, but in this case (as this is written) the search options on Ancestry.com aren’t quite working correctly. It’s spelled Troutfetter in the records–so a Soundex search of Trautvetter should find it. But it’s always a good idea for me to search for Frautvetter as well.
Inserting a ? Where the t or f should be might find what you are looking for. Also use an asterisk to substitute for several letters. This usually does the trick for me.
Wilcards are good sometimes. Part of it depends how “early” in the word the varying letters appear as some sites have restrictions as to when wildcards can be used. And sometimes Soundex searches catch variants that wildcards don’t.
There is something seriously wrong with alot of ancestry. I have had the same problems recently with the searches not turning up people I know are there (and it used to show them). Also, there is a problem with the syncing of data with ancestry.com and FTM software. I am getting really fed up with them. My whole database of over 40,000 people now has all kinds of things wrong with it. Why don’t they leave well enough alone. The new designed web site is horribe. Can’t find things and can’t enter resourses when I don’t have certain info. Bab, bad, bad.