I received some Spanish American Military Records yesterday. On one of the enlistment papers, it asked for the name and address of the nearest relative. It was filled in as W. Jones, Lepo, IL. When I went to <A HREF="www.geographicnameserver">www.geographicnameserver</A> and looked up the county, it showed Middlepoint, IL. I wondered if Lepo was a "nickname". This has me baffled! Karen

It almost looks as though the first 4 and last 3 letters of Middlepoint were lost in the records(or were picked up by your geographic search engine as a letter string???) Did you receive an actual copy of an original record or just a transcription? If the former, you might be able to tell if something is missing; if the latter, the transcriber may have written down only what he/she could translate without properly indicating that it was incomplete. Just guesses... --- KPhill2906@aol.com wrote: > I received some Spanish American Military > Records yesterday. > > On one of the enlistment papers, it asked for > the name and address of the > nearest relative. > > It was filled in as W. Jones, Lepo, IL. > > When I went to <A > HREF="www.geographicnameserver">www.geographicnameserver</A> > and looked up the county, it showed > Middlepoint, IL. I wondered if Lepo was a > "nickname". __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

Karen, I think the computer program picked up "middlepoint" just because it has the letters l-e-p-o in the middle of it. That community was very small and really was just a post office and a store and railroad stop. Was your person from somewhere in Illinois? I would look in his home county to see if there is a neighborhood or even a street in the area that could have been the home to M. Jones, or if there was a phonetic spelling that could hold a key. Of course, when you get into possible misspellings there is no end--Dupo, El Paso, Depot, Leopold, etc. Cindy KPhill2906@aol.com wrote: > > I received some Spanish American Military Records yesterday. > > On one of the enlistment papers, it asked for the name and address of the > nearest relative. > > It was filled in as W. Jones, Lepo, IL. > > When I went to <A HREF="www.geographicnameserver">www.geographicnameserver</A> and looked up the county, it showed > Middlepoint, IL. I wondered if Lepo was a "nickname". > > This has me baffled! > > Karen > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237