Sandra, You can't put much reliance on spelling to distinguish name like Tarner and Turner. Before the 20th Century, people (especially census takers and other minor government officials) spelled names the way they sounded. Illiteracy was common and people could not even spell their own names. The Bureau of the Census developed the Soundex Code back in the 1920s to solve this problelm. In the Soundex spelling of a name, the vowels and the weak consonants (h, w,y) are ignored and the consonants are reduced to six values: 1: b,f,p,v 2: c,g,,j,k,s,x,z 3: d,t 4: l 5: m,n 6: r Therefore, both Turner and Tarner will be reduced to the same value: T656. I think that Tarner is merely a spelling variation of Turner. That difference may be important to you, but it was probably not important to all the different people who created the primary records over the last 200 years. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Mamawagz1@aol.com> To: <philip.turner@worldnet.att.net> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 1999 12:01 AM Subject: Re: [TURNER-L] Genealogical Socitey of Pennsylvania > Dear Phil, > > I'm not a Turner, but a Tarner and am making little headway finding anything > about Tarners because there are so few of us-- a mere fraction of the number > of Turners on this planet. I thought I would just grab the opportunity to ask > someone (you) who has done a lot of searching among Turners recently if you > might have come across any Tarners? I know that there are Turners in this > country (like Ted Turner and Tina Turner) whose names appear in Europe as Ted > Tarner and Tina Tarner, so assume that there must be instances recorded here > and there of Turners actually changing their names from Turner to Tarner or > vice versa. Just haven't found any myself. How about you? > > Actually, my cousin and sister-in-law and a distant cousin of ours in > Maryland have done most of the searching out of our Tarner family tree. They > have managed to get back as far as our ggg grandfather John Tarner, born abt > 1782, died 6/Oct/1855 at age 74-75 in Pleasant Hall, Letterkenny Twp., > Franklin Co., PA. We cannot find record of his birth in this country (so far, > at least) so do not know if he was born here or in Europe somewhere. We have > a copy of his will and from it know that he owned property in PA during the > early 1800's. His wife's name was Nancy LNU, b. abt 1781, d. 1857. There were > 8 children: Jacob Henry, our ggg grandfather, b. 10/Oct/1805, John b. 1808, > Elizabeth b. bet 1808-1814, Nancy b. bet 1808-1814, William M. b. > 20/Mar/1815, Lydia b. 1818, Molly b. 19/Apr/1820, and Samuel b. 25/Mar/1824. > We know that all but Jacob and the two younger girls were born in Franklin > Co., PA, and most certainly the girls were, too. It is possible that Jacob > could have been born somewhere else. We don't have record of John and Nancy's > marriage, so it could have been somewhere other than Franklin Co. > > Now that I've done it, I'm not sure why I laid all that on you except for the > faint hope that you may have run across some old Tarner or other in your > searches. If you have, I certainly would love to know about it, if you have > the time. > > Thank you for listening and for giving the information about the GSI. I have > already passed forwarded it to our distant cousin in MD as he gets time now > and again to go to PA to research. > > Best regards, > > Sandra (Tarner) Wagner