Hi Denise, Thanks for the endorsement . . . I too am learning from you, inadvertently . . . after talking to you about spelling, and particularly the use of the "wildcard" "*", I got thinking more about my own use of them and wondered if I knew all I could know about the use of them on Ancestry.com . . . That prompted me to go looking at what they (Ancestry.com) had to say about that, and I found that I have been using them in a more limited way than is possible . . . I was only using the first three letters (minimum) of a name and the "*", but there are more possibilities, and there is a "?" wildcard too . . . Anyway, that all happened because I started questinging to myself, how you found "Pterhold", and without asking you, deduced that perhaps you used something like "*hold" . . . ??? Still don't know how you actually found it, so let me know if there is something else I'm missing . . . The larger message in all of this is to not be exclusionary . . . but, rather, be open to considering all possibilities until proven invalid/wrong . . . I still have more for you when I can get back to it . . . which is soon I hope, so I don't have to relearn what I have done! ;o)) I am very busy at the moment, and also fighting allergies that feel like I am drugged . . . lethargic and sleepy . . . Make it a great day, ~ Don Message: 3 Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 21:43:43 -0400 From: "Denise Jones" <gtr96@comcast.net> Subject: [NYWESTCH] The importance of using spelling variations To: "Nywestch@Rootsweb.Com" <nywestch@rootsweb.com> Message-ID: <030701c7a8a5$48477020$6e4bb445@yourd0f670b45a> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I want to thank Don for all his assistance tracing my Weiderhold line. He has taught me the importance of variations in spelling and it made a difference in what he found to what I found. My Weiderhold's family name has been spelled Wedchoe, Wedhole, possible Pterhold. A Matthew I was searching was found spelled Mather by the census taker. The name George came once as Georg. I have used variations but never thought of these! I felt it was necessary to stress the importance of using several variations on names. I was only using Weiderhod/Wiederhold/Weiderholt. I will definitiely keep this in the back of my mind from now on and want to again thank Don. Denise