Mary Elizabeth Unknown

Question

I've been working on sourcing https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/UNKNOWN-98162 this morning.

It's one of these difficult German records.  Pretty clearly the father's LNAB was Strauß, but daughter, Mary Elizabeth, is all over the place: Straus, Strauss, Strouse.  Please see the research note on the referenced profile.

So, is it best to leave Mary Elizabeth's LNAB as unknown?  Without a birth record, I don't think we can know for certain and since I'm not the PM (and have no wish to be) I'm not going to spend a lot more time on this. Anyone know of an easily available source that might help?

Answer 1

Hi Bill,

If the father's last name was Strauß, her birth name should also be Strauß.
Sometimes Strauß is also written as Strauss, especially when the letter ß is not used, as in the USA. In some old handwritten documents the ß written in an old handwriting looks like ss.
Strouse is only the anglicised form of the name.
So I would suggest to use Strauß as LNAB and write the other variants in the OLN field.
This would also reduce the considerable number of UNKNOWN and the name is definitely correct according to the sources.

Comments

Thanks Dieter.  Yes, I agree.  My reservation is: If the father had stopped using Strauss at the time of his daughter's birth (she was born in the US), without a birth document, we can't know for sure what the LNAB actually is. In that case, is it better to leave the profile's LNAB as "unknown" or take a best guess. My inclination is to do what you suggest, but WikiTree tends to be pretty fussy about LNAB and I'm always uneasy about what to do in cases such as this.