Think Outside the Box When Searching for Ancestors

I've been looking for my husband's great-grandfather Archie DeMeuleaneare in the 1921 Ontario census. As you can imagine, his surname DeMeuleaneare can has been spelled a dizzying variety of ways in records. I've found him as DeMeulenaire, DeMulenare, and yes, even De Millionaire.

To make searching even more challenging, Archie was born in Belgium as Achilles (pronounced AW-she, hence the Anglicization to Archie). So I have to go slowly and methodically, and search with all possible variations of both names. That is where wildcards come in. Wildcards are your friend. I'd be lost without them.

So in searching on Ancestry.com for Archie and his family in 1921 I was feeling pretty confident. I know the "tricks", I use wildcards, I start with a specific search (first name, surname, date of birth +/- 2 years, location of birth, residence). If that doesn't pan out I start eliminating fields. But the standard techniques were not working. I was getting no hits or thousands!

I decided to try searching for his wife. No dice. Okay I thought, I'll try searching for one of his children. Again I came up empty.

This is where genealogists need to think outside the box. Now is the time to try searching on just a first name and location - nothing else. Or a child's first name. Or a spouse. You may have to scroll through a few hundred results but that often does lead to success.

Jumping ahead, I'll share with you that I did eventually find Archie and his family - mistranscribed and indexed under the surname "Tekealeneau"

1921 Census Waterloo Township, Ontario

It is easy to see how the transcriber would have trouble with the surname! And that is why genealogists need to think outside the box when searching for an ancestor. Don't assume the indexing is correct. Don't assume the transcriber understood what they saw on the document.

Be persistent, be methodical, and be creative. You can't go wrong if you follow those three rules.