Genealogy Chat

Does anyone know how to prove that a mistake has been made when transcribing a record and how to put it right?
I know where my father and grandfather were born ,and older members of the family remember visiting the place. I have also seen the original death certificates and marriage lines but on just one census return my grandfather was recorded as Alfred E when in fact he was Alfred George.
Its ok for me I know who they were but for other people researching their family history that error has led to them following the wrong line

It is a rule written in stone for transcribers that they write what they see. Otherwise we could have so many incorrect "corrections" that the whole transcript could be useless. How many times have we heard "but my gran said her dad was from Yorkshire, the census says Norfolk" that sort of thing. Some rules have to be followed.

Having said that - if you have looked at the original census image and it clearly says Alfred G or you are certain this is your man, then ancestry will allow a note to be made of name alternatives. Just click on the name and then click on the correction to the left and complete the form that comes up.

Hopefully they will soon allow us to correct place names which are wildly and madly transcribed :)

I think the mistake was made when it was transcribed from the original.
I know that in my own mothers handwriting her E 's looked like a G.

Then you can add an addendum to that effect. However, it may well be mum didnt complete the form. See my post above. go to the census, click on his name and then look at the page tools to the left of the information:


Save record to someone in my tree
Save record to my shoebox
Comments and Corrections
E-mail image to a friend
View printer-friendly

And click on comments and corrections.

My mother would have not have filled out the census form for my fathers family especially since she was not even alive at the time.
My comment was about old fashioned hand writing being different from nowadays and interpretting it wrongly.
I realise that oral history can differ from the truth but surely original documents cannot be wrong whereas a census taker can mis hear and a transcriber can misinterpret.

And I have politely told you how to add an amendment. I am not aware of your mothers year of birth, many children were often the only ones in the house who could write. And any document completed in "old writing" would have been the same sort of writing used/read by the original transcribers of the enumerators forms - i.e. the census images we can now view. I take it you have viewed the original census image and its incorrect on that.

And yes, lots of original documents are wrong.

My point being that when you transcribe documents you are told to write only what you see and not to make guesses or change what is patently incorrect as it could lead to very real mistakes.

As Rachel has said most researchers would not rely on one source and a small difference in an initial would be of little consequence but the facility is there for you to add the amendment.

I think place names are a much more messy can of worms. Consider Heather's example: "but my gran said her dad was from Yorkshire, the census says Norfolk". If it were just that, then no problem - it's Norfolk; the problems arise when the census says Harrowgate, Norfolk. I'ld like to be able to search for Harrogate, Yorkshire - but how much can we fix - the county, the respelling to Harrogate, both? It probably would be nicesr to transcribe it as written, and search on the fully corrected version. I might note that I have ancestors who came from a parish that crossed county lines (well, until 1892-ish it did). FreeCEN transcribes the census place into one county (which had 90% of the parish), and where the pob is the other (BAN) 10%. the entry reads:
Aberdeenshire - Old Deer(Originally: Banffshire - Old Deer)
and searches with pob=ABD get all the hits, and pob=BAN get no hits. This solution works well.

FreeBMD adopt a different solution, so if a rego district crosses a county line, e.g., Clitheroe, then its events will be found both in Lancashire and in Yorkshire. This works OK too - it's probably more important to know what it's going to do than which solution is adopted.

Regarding Heather's "rule written in stone" comment: just be thankful the 10 commandments were written on stone tablets, cos if they'd have been written on papyrus, we'ld have hundreds of them.

The thing with ancestry place names - obviously we cant "change" the census image but ancestry have been promising for years now that we can add amendments, I do hope so.

Its not just the enumerator giving the nearest City even if it were 50 miles away basically because he cant understand "a country boy moved to the big city" accent and said country boy cant spell his little birth village's name, but also that ancestry transcribers in other countries cant read our place names OR they use a predictive program which is why we often see weird and wonderful transcriptions like "Somalia" for Somerset.

I think we should have an opportunity to put those very obvious mistakes right on the transcribed work.

LOL, when I first started this hobby, I found my GGF living in London/surrey with a place of birth given as "Thadwete" - now I searched and searched for this Thadwete - must be up north I thought - pmsl when I learned how to research better I found out he was born in Shadwell - going back to the image with this knowledge, clearly I could see it was Shadwell.

thank you for telling how we may be able to amend some records. My g grandfather is who was Samuel Wilson is down as Damuel in 1901 and Tilson in 1890.
On one census A birthplace should be Eastoft, Lincolnshire but for some reason is Eastoft RUSSIA!

Well Holland is in Lincolnshire, so why not Russia? LOL

Yes, when you KNOW what it should be you can see it cant you but you can also see how the mistake can be made if you dont know it.

Maxine, I remember in the past so many people getting excited on here that they had found a rellie born in exotic foreign places - lol - I think we all learned to check the census image :)

I always add corrections, even when they are nothing to do with me and I come across them by accident. I submitted an amendment for someone transcribed as Eross when it was clearly Cross on the image this week. I mean it only take a minute and may save some poor soul years of agonising over why their person disappeared in that particular census year.

If we all did it a few corrections a month each would soon multiply to millions :) My best name I think was my GGMX2 - Charlotte Steers - I couldnt find her at all in one census - the 91 I think but anyway abandoned that for a time but started work on one of her grandchildren.

Found the grandchild, checked the image as I always do in case there is something extra on there and blow me, who is above her in the same lodgings but Charlotte Steers, her gran - transcribed as Charlotte Meins.

Now that sounds ridiculous but when you looked at the image you could see how someone could mistake it, the S slanted hard to the right joined with the t to look like an M and of course e's often resemble i's ditto r's and n's. Simple.

LOL, I hope little Alice who was entered as Alien on one census (totally unrelated but it caught my eye, as it would) is grateful to me for correcting her name.

Blimey Annie, I bet she didnt know whether to laugh or cry. How did she get her cert without knowing the name on it though :)

How sad Annie. They lived hard lives.