What is the Soundex Code?

 Since there are so many variants on the spelling of surnames, the National Archives established the soundex code to index census and other archival material. A Soundex code (made of a letter and three numbers) is assigned to every distinct-sounding last name. For example, Hire and Hyre sound the same, but obviously are spelled differently. The same soundex code of H600 is given to both variants of the spelling. We love the soundex code system. It does make things a lot easier for genealogist.