Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Trouble With Leisure

I don't mean to complain about the surname but, really, Leisure? Of course, there are the many variations - Leasure, Lasure, Laysure, etc, - which aren't quite so cumbersome; but the spelling used by most of our Rush and Henry county sure makes it difficult searching some databases.

When I'm using genealogy/surname specific databases the name isn't a problem. A keyword search under Surname just looks at surnames a brings back a reasonable number of results. But, have you tried a keyword search for Leisure in an historical newspaper database? I never would have imagined people in the 1800s would have had so much "leisure" time! It's amazing.

Has anyone else had this problem and, better yet, have you found a way around it?

2 comments:

  1. I can see how 'Leisure' wouldn't be exactly the best surname to Google! You'll need to use a lot of qualifiers with that one. Use the "&" symbol and a Specific location. You'll still get a lot of bogus hits but a least you'll be in the right area :-)
    Regards,
    Theresa (Tangled Trees)

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  2. You're right. Most family historians only have to deal with large numbers of surnames and alternate spellings. But anytime you have a surname that is also a noun, or even a verb, an adjective, and sometimes even an adverb, it adds confusion to your search. As tedious as it can get, you just need to add additional names, places, etc. to your searches to narrow the field.

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