It All Sounds the Same

Kane, Keane, Kean, Kain, Kaine, Caine, Cain, Cane. With or without the O in front, it's still "Kane".

Variations in spelling has made research a little tricky trying to decide if it is a family line or not. We have noticed  that for Annie's family, in Ireland, on the birth registrations for two of the three children that were born there, her surname is written as O'Kane. When she was in Lancashire, England area, Annie's surname was written as O'Keane. Once in Texas, her surname was even spelled as O'Cane. Annie's preferred spelling seemed to be O'Keane. Her daughter, Nellie (Ellen), used 'Keane' as a middle name.

There are a variety of reasons for the inconsistency. Names were spelled phonetically as best as the scribe could. I imagine that the local priest had his way of spelling, and the local government clerk had another. There is also the fact that old records are, at times, incorrectly transcribed by an indexer who can't either read the record due to the condition of it or because of the penmanship. The use of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to digitize records and books can sometimes  'read' incorrectly if the print is not clear in the scanned copy. These are just a few of the things we have come up against in our research.

We hope that by showing what we have,despite the variance in the O'Kane name....someone out there might be able to connect a branch to a limb of the family tree. :)

This is the church record for Annie's marriage to Stephen J Glumaz.  Liverpool, 1876

This is from Annie's daugher Ellen's (aka Nellie) birth record. Annie's first child, Stephen John, also has 'O'Kane' on his birth registration. Ballymena, 1879

This record is indexed from Annie's third child and last to be born in Ireland, James Joseph. 1883

This is the baptismal record for Annie's last child, Francis Benaventur, born in Texas. 1889

Here is the 1871 Census for Birkenhead, England which is right across from Liverpool. Annie's name was transcribed on Ancestry.com as Annie Ream. After comparing R's and K's, we confirmed that the name was Keane.

Check here to see Annie's marriage announcement in a Liverpool newspaper and here to see how the OCR 'read' O'Keane as  O'KzAmE.