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Sorting, at least alphabetical sorting, is a science. There are set rules that establish a well defined hierarchy. It creates order out of what would otherwise be chaos. When ties happen they can be broken, most times. We know that when common terms or names occur, i.e. James John Jones, that visual searching may be needed. But all in all, sorting works.
However, (the dreaded however) there are strange instances, often isolated to local practice, that go against the rules. These local anomalies can stymie research if they are not known to the researcher.
Several generations of my family lived in Nova Scotia, Canada and most of their surnames contained the prefix “Mc.” There are the McDonalds, McInnises, McLeods, McIntryes and the list goes on. Early in my research I realized that sometimes people substitute “Mac” for “Mc” which means I need to search both forms of the name to be thorough.
While searching the 1891 Canadian Censuses for my great grandmother, Flora McDonald, I stumbled upon a unique anomaly. Her name was recorded on the census as “Donald Mc, Flora.” Because I was frustrated at being unable to find the McDonald family, I chose to do a manual search of the records for the district where they lived. I visually scanned the entries and was several pages in when I noticed the special way that “Mc” names were being recorded. In every instance the prefix Mc was placed after the root name: Donald Mc, Donnell Mc, Leod Mc, etc. I performed the search of the records again, with the new name format, and right at the top of the list was my great grandmother.
After some thought about this strange practice I came to the conclusion that this recording and filing was probably done by necessity. A tremendous percent of the population in these areas of Nova Scotia had surnames beginning with Mc. In the old days pre-printed file dividers came with the letters A-Z and Mc. Filing all of the Mcs under one category would be cumbersome. The workaround was to file McDonald under D, McLeod under L and so on.
The indexing of the census records stayed consistent with the original records. This adds an additional search term when looking for a McDonald or other Mc name. At least now I know about such an anomaly.
I haven’t followed my ancestors back to Scotland yet, but when I do I will keep an eye out for this form of filing and recording.
