Our ancestors often used a variety of spellings for their first names and surnames. You can use wildcards with the Exact filter selected to find unusual spellings of names.
There are two wildcard characters:
- ? (question mark) : matches one character which can be anything
- * (asterisk) : matches 0 to N characters
So if you enter Sm?th* you can match Smith, Smyth, Smithe and Smythe
Ann* will match Ann, Anne, Anna, and Annabelle
My maiden name is Gillespie, and it is very often spelled: Gillaspie, Gillispie or Gillespie or even Gillespy.
I can use wildcards to match a variety of combinations.
This matches a variety of spellings, making my search just a little bit easier.
Happy Searching!
Ancestry Anne