Legacy LVUG Community

It's probably been addressed before - most likely several times, but due to my short memory recall, here's my question anyway.  There are some twenty-odd spellings / variations of my family surname - Gallagher.  In most situations, I found the spelling the result of an illiterate, political appointed census enumerator, or some other similar situation...  how is the best way to enter that person into Legacy?  I realize that we should capture the evidence as we find it, but that can certainly make future evaluations somewhat problematic - e.g., list all the "Gallaghers" - what about the Galligers, the Gallahers, etc.?  I have been correcting the surname and entering the recorded spelling as an "AKA."  What is the consensus of this highly-learned group?  Thanks for your thoughts.

I think I saw something to answer this question sometime in the past, but cannot recall...  Over the years, I have been somewhat undisciplined when adding people to my Legacy family tree to a point where, today there are many very, very distant relatives that I would like to remove.  I was thinking of possibly starting over - hopefully by being able to create a new tree containing only by direct line ancestors starting with my mother and father - eliminating the "mothers-in-lay of 28th cousins - 14 times removed."  Is there a way to create such a tree without having to one by one through my entire data base?  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks