Familysearch was correct when they indicated that it was the way it was transcribed it is going to stay that way. What you need to do is find the document that they were transcribing to see how the names were spelled. If the record was an extracted record -- that is the church actually did the transcription of the record, then at least two people had to look at the record. If there was a conflict between the two transcribers, then a third person took a look and decided which one was the more correct transcription. However, if it was not an extraction, but a submittal of a record, that means you or I could have submitted the record in question. One must be aware that no name is "misspelled". If your grandparents spelled their name in such a way that is different than the way it is currectly being spelled, then the name is correct for them. In other words if for example the surname (and I'll keep it a simple name) happened to be Smith as you spell it today, but back when your grandparents were spelling their name, it was spelled Smythe, that is correct for the way they chose to spell their name. It could also have been Smithe, or Smyth or some other derrivative spelling. Now, if you are looking a census record, one must always remember the rules the enumerator had to follow. The biggest rule was that they COULD NOT ASK the person being enumerated how to spell the name. The enumerator had to write it down either as the way he thought it should be spelled, the way the enumerator knew it was spelled, or the way in which he thought he heard the name pronounced. For example, you come across a family that was from say Germany, but the enumerator was not from Germany or knew how the spoken word comes across when spoken in English, he wrote down the name as he thought he heard it and spelled it to the best of his or her knowledge. You could also be from England, but not from say Yorkshire area, but from London -- there is a difference in the way English is spoken, even though it is the English language. How about when you hear today someone speak who is from Massachusetts and then you go to South Carolina. Can you understand the English that you are hearing? How about when you are listening to the television and people are describing something and it comes across as slurred, backwater, or illiterate. Can you make out what it is that they are talking about? While I am using examples of the spoken word in these instances, you must remember that the clerks in the court houses, employers, parish priests/ministers, hospital/hotel keeps all write down people's names and mangle it unless they stop to ask or you notice they are writing it incorrectly. Therefore the same applies to people are transcribing records. While not confronted with verbal pronounciation, they are confronted by the handwriting. Look at the way you wrote your name today, then think about how someone would write your name back in the early 1900s, then go back in time to the 1800s, the 1700s, the 1600s, or even back to the 1500s. A perfect example of going back in time is to take a look at some of the parish registers from England. In the 1800s, they started pre-printing forms so all the priest had to do was fill in the blanks so to speak. But before that, the parish priest had to handwrite every single entry for births, marriages and deaths. As you look at the records as you go back in time, the handwriting changed drastically. When you get closer to 1700, the handwriting and the legibility gets worse and worse. When you are looking at the parish registers from 1538, when they first began, you are looking at a lot of records that are latin or using terms that are latin. If you don't quickly learn these latin terms, you are lost and it makes it very difficult to read, not to mention the handwriting is so scruntched that at some point it is impossible to read. What you need to do is take the information that you found on family search and transcribe what it says, find the original record and look at it yourself. Then make a note in your database about the discrepancy between the transcribed name as familysearch entered it and what you think it really says. Now, it is quite possible that the transcription has manged the name from the original record - like if the record really does say and very clearly the name Smith, but it was transcribed some muddled way, then I would suggest you recontact family search by making a copy of the page in question, noting the name as it was indexed and point out that it should be corrected to whatever the actual record said. If all you are asking them to do is change a spelling to a "modern" spelling, or the spelling as you know it, they won't make the change because that is not what the record says. Yes, for newbies it might be difficult for them to find the record you looked at; but given time, these newbies quickly become more experienced and learn that it is going to take some thinking on their part to work around the problem to find the record. Always expecting either Ancestry.com or Familysearch.org to being 100% accurate just won't happen cause humans are involved and it is humans that make the records and it is humans that are transcribing them to put them on line so that we don't have to revert back to the "old fashioned" method of research -- letter writing, requesting copies, transcribing and waiting and waiting to get answers back. Having stuff on line has spoiled us all to the point we want immediate results. I guess I'm one of the "old fashioned" people because that was how I started with researching my genealogy. I started with letters, waited for answers, took seminar classes, read how-to books, and practiced like crazy to read old handwriting from original records. I've learned there are backdoors for getting to records that are indexed badly, but that's all in the game and the fun of the hunt. Hope this explains a little bit about familysearch.org and others and will help you in the future to do your research and to understand some of the difficulties you will have to overcome in the years to come when doing your family research. Christie rom: BMacKie lu2silly@yahoo.com I recently politely asked Family Search to change a name of one of my great randparents that they mispelled so badly it would have caused a newbie to earch elsewhere in vain. They politely said that that was the way it was ranscribed, and it would stay that way. That's the kind of thing that akes you want to pull out your hair at the roots (no pun intended). At east they don't charge for the service(?).