Need to clarify the spelling of my paternal great grandmothers name.

Question

I'm having trouble sorting out my paternal grandmother's ancestry.  I know she was Ora Blanche Wells (Wells-13324) but the information I found on her mother's name is perplexing!  Some places it's spelled Evalyn Mears and others has the last name Mairs.  Her name is clearly spelled Mears in her Nebraska Marriage document with spouse William E. Wells (Wells-13865) yet on my grandmother's death certificate her mother's name is spelled Mairs.  Any suggestions how this should be managed?  I would like to continue researching this branch of my family tree, but feel I'm blocked without knowing the correct spelling.

 Any help would be much appreciated.

Comments

Put alternate spellings in Other Last Name field which will help if others are searching for her with either spelling.

People didn't worry about spelling in the past, so many names have varieties.  Census records have varied names because census taker didn't understand family name at times.

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look for government documents like land records and a will for her father Isaac in Iowa. NOT census. Census takers were notorious for making mistakes. A will or land purchase, Isaac  would have signed his own name

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on his land tax assessment Isaac uses Mairs and the marriage license of his son Si, handwritten by applicant, Si uses Mairs - images available on Ancestry

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Isaac's headstone uses Mairs

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/119892172

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http://sites.rootsweb.com/~lgcool/berrier/mary.html

Answer 1

In doing some search in the US census records for the 1850-1900 period Mears is by far the more common spelling, Mairs  gives about 10% of the hits. Some records also come up as the variant Maers. Flipping between Mears and Mairs may happen periodically, so keeping watch/searching for both spellings is recommended. Just on the predominance of numbers, I suspect Mears is the “correct” spelling. However, it is quite possible that the different spellings came to be used consistently in different branches of the family, just tike the “Larson vs Larsen” situation.

Answer 2

We have to remember that pronunciation evolves, and spelling conventions evolve.

When they wrote Mears, they probably intended it to rhyme with Pears, or Mares.  "Ea" used to be a normal way of writing the sound in break or steak.  Sea was like say, not like see.

Over time, the pronunciation of ea changed to an ee sound in many words, but not all.  For instance, we have tear (drop) and also tear (rip).

But the spelling rarely changed.  Mostly, people just decided that ea now indicated an ee sound, except where it didn't.

In the Mears case, the old pronunciation stuck, but Mears no longer seemed like the right way to spell it, so people came up with other spellings.

Answer 3

Always keep in mind who gave the information and when. Evalyn was probably present and gave her own name for the marriage license. The name on the death certificate was given by someone who many never have even known her mother, and only heard the name mentioned long before.