What’s in a name?

by Wanda Tucker~ Do you or one of your ancestors have a commonly misspelled name? If you are like me, there are more than a few! When researching these people, it sometimes necessary to think FAR outside the box. Many times in distant past, names were spelled phonetically, or just misunderstood by the hearer. And sometimes, immigrant’s names were changed to “Americanize” them. Census takers were among the worst offenders, spelling names in sometimes incredibly strange ways.

Recently, I was doing some research for a friend. Family lore about the individuals in question suggested that the mother involved died either during or just shortly after childbirth. Her married name was Mary Stiglitz. Her husband was Jacob. They married in Wyoming in the early 1900s.

I was able to immediately find their marriage record at a wonderful site, the Western States Marriage Record Index at BYU Idaho.

http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections/westernStates/search.cfm

Here, the spelling matched what I had been given. Excellent! It also provided me with a spelling for her maiden name.

I proceeded to the next logical step, or so I thought, https://www.findagrave.com/. Searching Stiglitz netted me nothing. Findagrave is notoriously particular about names. Any variation in spelling of first or last name, or the wrong combination of first and last name spellings will get you nowhere.

What I do in these cases is drop the first name, and search only last name variations. In extreme cases, it can be necessary to search individual cemeteries in the area where you believe the person died, and to search ALL records beginning with the same letter as their last name. That was where I ended up with this one. I could not hit on any variation of the spelling to give me a record.

And it’s not much wonder why, because the name I finally found on the headstone was Stiglic. But it wasn’t the mother, it was the father. Huh. Strange, there was no headstone for the mother. I searched other cemeteries in the area, with the same results, no Mary Stiglitz of any spelling.

I had been given other information about the family, so I moved on to that. I knew that the son had reportedly been raised by Mary Stiglitz’s sister, Stephania. Searching the Western States Marriages yielded a record for Stephania, and a married name, Podlesnik. Now I was on to something.

I searched the census in 1920 for Stephania Podlesnik and family. Since I knew that Mary had married in October of 1913, and her husband had died by 1914, I could safely assume that her son was born in a very small window of time.

In the 1920 Census, there was a boy, John, living with the family who was close to the correct age. But, my search of Stephania’s married name had led to another excellent piece of information, the Social Security Death Index record for one Jack Podlesnik. Jack Podlesnik’s parents were listed as Jacob Stiglitzc and Mary Budna! Note yet another misspelling of Stiglitz.

So there was no Jack in the Podlesnik household in 1920. Strange, where was he? I supposed that it was less likely that the name Jack would be misspelled in the census, so I searched the area using only the first name Jack and an age range of +/- 2 years, no last name. Thank goodness there were not a million people living in Wyoming in 1920. And eureka! There he was. The spelling was unbelievable. Jack Stlight, age five. He was living with an “uncle,” right next door to his mother’s sister Stephania and her family. I was unsure of the identity of the uncle, John Wiltz, but a John Valte of the correct age, origin, and immigration date appears on the 1930 Census living with the Podlesniks, so I believe he is the same man. I was unable to determine how he was related (yet).

In 1930, there was no Jack, born in Wyoming in the correct time period, recorded in the entire United States. I know this because I again searched the United States Federal Census for the entire nation, using only the first name and the +/- 2 years parameters. That was a lot of Census pages to go through! With the variable spellings of the last name I had seen, it seemed to be the only way to find him. But he was not recorded anywhere.

By 1940, Jack is living with Stephania and her family, and has changed his name to Podlesnik.

So at least Jack was found. But I still hadn’t found his mother. I reported back to my friend what I knew, and I resolved to keep looking for Mary Stiglitz. I was sure she was out there somewhere, identified by whatever misspelling of her name could be made. I just had to figure out how to search for her.

More to come…