This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Shafer, Schaeffer, and all kinds of variants Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/3AB.2ACE/3324.1 Message Board Post: I have several suggestions, which you may have acted upon. If you are near an LDS family history center, call them up and ask 1) what are the hours you are open 2) do you have Ancestry.com on your computers? If you get to the FH center, try to find in the censuses Shaeffer [it is spelled all kinds of ways, as you have discovered] in the appropriate year censuses. Be aware of this: The indexing for the censuses on Ancestry.com, I am told, was outsourced overseas, and the error rate is high [of the index]. And of course that does not even include the errors made by the census taker himself (always fellows until later censuses.) And sometimes the film preparer may have skipped filming a page or two of the census!!! Write down as many variants of the surname as you can think of, but also, on Ancestry.com you can use wild cards. I think I was told you have to have the first three letters [but vary them, of course] and then an asterisk. For one census search for a recent ancestor, we could not use the surname Williams because the census-taker had left the final s off Williams, and that threw the name into a different Soundex code. We used the first name of the wife, which name was unusual in that particular community, which was largely Spanish-speaking. If you do not find this man on any censuses--of the right place and the right time--then ask whether there may be a CD-ROM of the Bureau of Land Management patents for Wisconsin. The BLM-GLO patent indexes sporadically are on the internet. It seems to be hit or miss. Some days I can find it, and other days I cannot. Let us assume your man owned some property. Did he come back--or did his heirs came back to KY to sell the land?. I have had some breakthroughs by combing the deeds of several States--also probate records. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City invariably has films for deeds of most counties, also probate records, court records, and tax records. Families, except those who retained Bibles, did not make records for you and me--but the Government kept records, and so we have to use Government records--also jail records, bail bonds, guardianship bonds, you name it!!! Have your librarian dig out for you some basic genealogy *how-to* books and take a look at the resources we detectives have to use. It ain't easy, but, golly, sometimes it is fun!!!! E.W.Wallace