[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Goring birth record

[Gary Warner]

Marlene,

Further to my last email, I was too hasty in not looking more closely at 
the first search per Item 3 below.

I went back and looked more carefully at the results of a search wherein 
the only criteria was Ja for father's given name and Fr for mother's 
given name.   Attached is the result (not sent to the list).   You will 
see that this search gives more than we want to know, but it also caught 
two more children- Friederike Gering, and Christina Goering.

One additional thing that I forgot to mention is sometimes you need to 
completely discount the leading letter of any surname or given name. 
That is especially true if the database is transliterated from Russian 
into the Roman alphabet (look especially closely at names beginning with 
G or H as they are interchangeable in Russian, and J, as there is no J 
in Russian- usually changed to Y).   Also, since everyone' handwriting 
is unique, you need to look carefully at names that begin with a P or a 
B, as they sometimes look remarkably similar when written.   Other 
script letters can also be confusing.

Gary Warner
SGGEE Databases Manager

On 4/9/2012 9:55 AM, Gary Warner wrote:
> Marlene,
>
> Searching in any database is somewhat of an art, but there are things
> you can do to make it work better for you.
>
> Consider doing a search the same as pouring a soup through a sieve.
> If the holes in the sieve are large, then it is the same as the search
> criteria being very loose (that is, you enter nothing in the search
> criteria), and everything passes the sieve and the result is that you
> still have soup in its entirety that passes the sieve, and the return
> is all of the soup (data) in the soup (database).
>
> If you make the holes in the sieve smaller (more criteria in the
> search to be met), then a part of the soup gets hung up on the sieve,
> and you can look at what was caught to see if it is what you want to
> look at.
>
> On the other hand, if you make the sieve too small (too many items of
> criteria OR wrong criteria), then all of the soup gets caught in the
> sieve and nothing gets through that is special (including the liquid
> if you make the sieve holes non-existent).
>
> This is not a perfect analogy, since the sieve separates based on
> size, and the database search separates based on attributes (certain
> letter combinations in the data), but I think that you can see what I
> am trying to say.
>
> In the case of your Goring data, you first need to remember one thing,
> and that is just because you spell a name a certain way, does not mean
> others will spell it the same way.   I have seen Goring spelled
> Goring, Goering and Goehring, and if given the list of possible
> alternatives, I would add Gering and Gehring, AND ANY OTHER NAME THAT
> SOUNDS PHONETICALLY THE SAME.
>
> So what to do, given that there are so many variations, and this is
> with a simple name?
>
> 1.  You could do iterative searches wherein you enter all variations
> of given and surnames- tedious at best, and you are likely going to
> make some errors that invalidate the search, no matter how painstaking
> you do this.
>
> 2.  You could enter in the surname as just Go (just the first two
> letters), and the given name as August and you would recover August
> Goering born in 1869 (you would actually recover two identical August
> Goering, since he is listed as part of the original St. Petersburg
> duplicate records database, and again from the separate original
> Rozyszcze parish films).   Note, however, that this would not have
> found August Gering, if that is the way his name is spelled in the
> database.
>
> 3,  My preference in a search is to first MINIMIZE the amount of
> search criteria and see if you can live with the large return of data
> that was caught.   If too much data is caught, then add more criteria,
> but only a letter at a time.   To find all of the members of a family
> in one search I would (in this case), enter no surnames anywhere, but
> instead enter in just the given names of the father and mother (I
> would enter in only Ja for the father, and Fri for the mother, since
> there are again more than one spelling for given names).   I do this
> search, but the results of this search are still a bit loose, since it
> includes more people than I am interested in, so in addition, I enter
> Ze in the mother's surname field, and the result is in the attachment.
>
> Those on the list will not get the attachment, so I will describe that
> the method in 3 above yields two August, two Ferdinand, and one Anna,
> all plausibly the children of Jakob or Jacob Goering or Goehring and
> Friederike or Friedericke Zehnert or Zehnhof, of Zekner or Zelmer.
> You will have to look at the original records to determine if the
> extracted names are as shown, or if they are really all one name or
> the other.    Remember that even if they are really all from one
> family, the pastor who made the entries may have 'misspelled' the
> names, since he was only writing what he heard and what he knew to spell.
>
> The above searches may still not have yielded all the children of this
> couple, since there are probably some births where the names are even
> more different, or the mother's name is omitted, etc.   Now that you
> have a better understanding of how to search, you can explore more on
> your own.
>
> Gary Warner
> SGGEE Databases Manager
>
>
> On 4/9/2012 8:53 AM, Marlene Dopp wrote:
>> I am having trouble locating a birth record that should be in the SGGEE
>> database.   I found a confirmation record of August Goring on Film
>> #2380025,
>> record #289, 1884.  Right below this record, record # 290 list an Ann
>> Goring
>> b 25 Dec 1870 with same parents Jacob Goring and Friederike Zehner
>> confirmed
>> on the same day. This is a child I didn't know about so I am
>> searching for
>> her birth record in the database.  The confirmation record stated she
>> was
>> born in Teremna.  Could someone explain what I am doing wrong as I can't
>> find much in the database.  I do have film # 905256 on indefinite
>> loan which
>> should have the record that I can look up, but I would like to figure
>> out
>> how to find it in the database too.  Thank you in advance for any help.
>>
>> Marlene Dopp
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ger-Poland-Volhynia Mailing List hosted by
>> Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe http://www.sggee.org
>> Mailing list info at http://www.sggee.org/communicate/mailing_list