Proper LNAB usage when different spellings exist - Henry vs Henrie

Question

I have numerous Henrie's in my tree. All original documentation (i.e. Censuses) I have found support the spelling which I know. There is a book titled, "ANCESTRY AND DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM HENRIE 1799—1883" by Manetta (Prince) Henrie (Revised, Updated and Reprinted by Ryan Henrie), Published 1954 Provo, Utah. The book states that William Henrie is the son of Michael Henry who emigrated to America probably from Scotland. All descendants of William Henrie in the book use the same spelling of the surname.

There is another book titled, "Henry Genealogy" by William Henry Eldridge, Press of T. R. Marvin and Son, Boston, Massachusetts, 1915. In this book Michael Henry is mentioned as well as his wife and their children. No specific spelling of the surname is listed for their children in this book.

The tombstones for Michael and his wife both have the Henry spelling, but tombstones for their descentants that I have found as well as census data, marriage certificates, and death certificates, all have the spelling of Henrie.

One member on here created a profile for [[Henry-3321 | William Henry]] and I created a profile for [[Henrie-44 | William Henrie]] that should be merged. Merging these profiles and going with the Henrie surname as LNAB for all descendants would change numerous profiles, but seems to be the correct thing do according to policy on here. The first book is specific to the descendants of William Henry, whereas the second book seems to only list William due to findings by the author of other Henry's while doing research.

When creating or merging profiles, what would be the proper/correct/prefered way for these surnames?

Book 1 - http://www.ldsinfobase.net/rh/history/histories/henrie_book.pdf

Book 2 - https://archive.org/stream/henrygenealogyde00eldr/henrygenealogyde00eldr_djvu.txt

 

 

Answer 1

Kenneth, the Wikitree help pages say to use the spelling that the person used. Ideally we would locate the birth or baptism of the person and use that for their Last name at birth. If they show up with another spelling regularly that they used throughout the rest of their life (as shown on original documents) then that would be placed in Current Last Name   And then there is the Other Last Name field for alternate spellings.

Comments

And just to add to Jillaine's comment, if all you have is secondary sources for the individual, you should follow the more reliable source - As I evaluate a work I have a little mental scorecard to decide which source to accept - this is not a comprehensive list, but some ideas to get you started on making our own:

cites sources +points

cites original sources +points

the facts that I can independently verify are generally accurate +points

identfies and explains conflicting information and potential errors (in ther own work or in the sources they cite) +points (shows they evaluated their evidence)

single author has written many entirely unrelated genealogies - points (I'm suspicious of the actual research that went into each work)

later editions were released containing corrections/errata +points (shows they cared about accuracy)