Ancestry can be so perverse

[JoyNor]

Whenever I find and save a burial record, usually complete with image online so there is no doubting the date of burial (lets say 28 April 1872) why do I get so annoyed by Ancestry doing the autofill for the date of death as "about 1872" which I then have to amend? Grr! I have visions of piles of rotting corpses that Ancestry thinks have been awaiting interment. Of course you do sometimes get a death right at the end of December, with burial in early January. So buried January 1st 1856 generates a death of "about 1856". With some exceptions burials rarely take place on the actual day someone passed away. Am I easily irritated? Do I need to lie down in a darkened room? LOL!

 

[Bob Spiers]

Do I need to lie down in a darkened room? LOL!

Make sure the curtains do not let in any chinks of light.

But if that irritates consider this. When entering birth (the same for marriage and death) information in my Tribal Pages (TP) it allows 9 dropdown qualifications, viz: Born: on -before-after-about-between-calc-estimate-interpret-phrase. Now if I know the actual date I will accept the default 'Born on', but often in the early stages of research I need to edge my bets with other options; mostly 'Calc' (calculated) or 'Estimate' (self explanatory). The problem comes when I get round to updating with new information and I forget to remove the calc/estimate qualification . This is not so bad when I spot the problem for myself, but all too often as TP is open for some family members to view with a passcode, they do so and ask what I mean by a Born estimate of (say) 3rd Mar 1849. Then, tail between my legs, I explain I forgot to change the qualification to Born on. That is when I find the dark room helps.

 

[JoyNor]

Now my head really hurts! I'll meet you in the room - you bring the beers I'll get us some snacks. Check for blackout blinds as well as curtains. And padded walls?

I'll bet we genealogy folk coped pretty well with lockdown and probably stave off dementia with all this stuff going round in our heads!

 

[JoyNor]

And another rant from me - you do wonder what you pay for on Ancestry as some of the transcriptions are so bad it would be better were they not included. I expect many of you have tried in vain to find a baptism image and failed. Anyone else noticed how many pages (and I have encountered dozens) are indexed with all the girls called Doctor Mary, Doctor Hannah etc - because the "Mary, dau of John and Sarah Bloggs" has had the dau or daur turned into Doctor! I have lost track of how many I have corrected and how many I have reported. Sigh! I once read that Ancestry used prisoners in US jails as transcribers. Obviously they are literate but surely they should get instruction. And if Ancestry are paying anyone to transcribe then give me some of that money for old rope that I have already earned by my corrections.

I think the heat is getting to me! Back to the darkened room . . . .

 

[Helen7]

you do wonder what you pay for on Ancestry as some of the transcriptions are so bad it would be better were they not included.

I agree there are some poor transcriptions on Ancestry, but my favourite is a mis-transcription at Find My Past. In the 1939 register, my grandfather's name is correctly transcribed as Douglas Rawlins, but his wife is transcribed as 'Harold Roslina, Male' when the original is clearly Harriet Rawlins, Female. Ancestry has the correct transcription in this case.

 

[JoyNor]

That's a cracker Helen! It took me a long time to find my ancestor Mary Barrowclough. She was transcribed as Proary Barnowsky when I finally tracked her down

 

[Pauline]

I found a couple of good ones at Ancestry a few years ago, which I posted here.

 

[Pauline]

The PCC Wills index at Ancestry has some amusing place name mis-transcriptions. Yesterday I noticed a testator who was apparently from "Lamberhurst Whichis, Kent, England" As you've probably guessed, the original said "the Parish of Lamberhurst which is in the County of Kent".

 

[Bob Spiers]

I've lost count of the times I and others have responded in the Forum to 'fuzzy' mis-transcriptions in both Ancestry and FMP, and how many times Peter has chastised us all for calling to task the Transcribers, telling us of the thankless work they undertake and perform to the best of their abilities.

I've posted my share of such, and may likely to so again, but it is always nice to hear new moans and groans or even amusing giggles and in the latter context I think Pauline's 'Lamberhurst Whichis' is a front runner.

 

[At home in NZ]

I've lost count of the times I and others have responded in the Forum to 'fuzzy' mis-transcriptions in both Ancestry and FMP, and how many times Peter has chastised us all for calling to task the Transcribers, telling us of the thankless work they undertake and perform to the best of their abilities.

I've posted my share of such, and may likely to so again, but it is always nice to hear new moans and groans or even amusing giggles and in the latter context I think Pauline's 'Lamberhurst Whichis' is a front runner.

Agree.
The pedant in me has also noticed the mis spelling of the last word of the subject of this discussion.

 

[Pauline]

Another perverse thing happening at Ancestry recently is that with some datasets, entering a date in the birth field no longer finds baptisms in the way that it used to.

So doing a search in the Oxfordshire parish registers, for example, for a Job Green baptised in Witney in 1794, I can select baptism from the dropdown towards the bottom of the search box, but can only enter a date in the Birth, Death or Marriage fields - there is no date box in the 'Any Event' field here. Previously I would enter 1794 in the Birth field, but now that produces no results, as does entering Witney in the Birth field without a date.

Entering Witney in the Any Event field finds the baptism, but if I do the same search for a John Smith baptism in Witney instead, I get 48 matches from 1571 - 1811 to look through - and they are not sorted in date order.

The only options in the dropdown are Baptism, Burial, Confirmation and Marriage, while the search fields have always been Birth, Death, Marriage and Any Event (with no date box for the last). So how are we supposed to find a baptism in registers where no dates of birth are given?

Much the same happens with the Baptisms from 1813 - there is no way of entering a baptism date, and the place has to go into the Any Event field.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Harking back to Pauline's 'Lamberhurst Whichis' amusingly reminded me that when first married I lived in a rural village in Northamptonshire named 'Deanshanger'. But to the village natives (which included my in-laws of course) it was colloquially referred to a 'Shanger'. But some would insist it was 'Shanger Halfin' and allowed for the fact that the Northamptonshire & Buckinghamshire border ran through the village ...in truth just the bottom half, affecting two pubs and a few houses. Rates for the whole village and council services came under Northampton R.D.C but for everything else (buses, shopping and work) they came under Buckinghamshire.

Now I'm not saying anyone used either Shanger or Shanger Halfin when completing Censuses but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. In fact every adjacent village had its own unofficial colloquial name. Such as Lecky (Leckhamstead); Langer (Shutlager); Perry (Potterspury) -not to be confused with Paulers (Paulerspury)- and (my favourite) Wickout (Wicken)- a play on week in and week out. If you wanted to follow village gossip, you needed to know these short forms.

It took me ages to understand the dialect and appreciate village tongue-in cheek humour. For at least a year I was simply pointed out as "Jim Read's son-in-law", before anyone outside the immediate family knew my name. This changed when I played the piano at one of the 5 village pubs (the one that came under Buckinghamshire) - then I became Bob (he plays the Piano at the "Fox")- Jim Read's son in law. Fame at last.

 

[At home in NZ]

doing a search in the Oxfordshire parish registers, for example, for a Job Green baptised in Witney in 1794, I can select baptism from the dropdown towards the bottom of the search box, but can only enter a date in the Birth, Death or Marriage fields - there is no date box in the 'Any Event' field here. Previously I would enter 1794 in the Birth field, but now that produces no results, as does entering Witney in the Birth field without a date.

This intrigued me so I decided to try it myself. I searched in the
All Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1812
Name Job Green
Dob 1794
Location Witney, clicked on search and got this result:



Perhaps it's to do with the way we hold our tongue??

 

[Pauline]

Perhaps it's to do with the way we hold our tongue??

I tried sticking my tongue out but it made no difference.

However, I can see what the difference is - I was doing a more exact search than you. I usually search with the 'Match all terms exactly' box ticked, then broaden the search individually for first and surnames (usually exact and similar, & sometimes soundex or sounds like as well) and date (as appropriate). I usually have the place on exact if I know where the event happened or leave it out if I don't.

Your method works well for Job Green, but with John Smith I got 260 results, which is not so useful.

Also, I sometimes use the search as a quick way to find the right place in a register when I'm browsing for an event that I know is there, but isn't showing up. So I'll enter the date and place but no name, and that isn't working for me even if I untick 'Match all terms exactly'.

Of course, I can browse the register without using the search but it can take some time to find the right place, and then when I eventually find the event in question, I can't correct the transcription if I can't find the transcribed entry!

 

[At home in NZ]

I was doing a more exact search than you. I usually search with the 'Match all terms exactly' box ticked, then broaden the search individually for first and surnames (usually exact and similar, & sometimes soundex or sounds like as well) and date (as appropriate). I usually have the place on exact if I know where the event happened or leave it out if I don't.

I have found the 'exact' and 'soundex' et al don't work very well for me. I know I'm flying in the face of other people's opinions but if a data base has a powerful enough search engine, which I believe Ancestry does have, you should be able to get away with the minimum of search criteria and get good results.
Must admit, John Smith can be a problem
The CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) site is a favourite with me because they actually advise entering the minimum of info in the search. Although that may have changed since I last looked some months ago.

 

[Pauline]

I have found the 'exact' and 'soundex' et al don't work very well for me

I guess, like most things, it all comes down to personal preference. My general experience has been that doing broad searches leads to far too many results, most of which are of no relevance.

I have found a reasonable workaround on this for burials by adding a date but leaving the location field blank and putting the place name in as a Keyword instead. It doesn't seem to work for baptisms, though.

However, that's when I hit another perverse thing about the burials in this dataset - the burial of 'Kesiah daughter of Richard & Keziah Lardner', for example, is transcribed simply as as ' Kesiah', with no surname. That's not so bad for a relatively unusual name like Kezia (& variants), providing it's been correctly transcribed (and it frequently isn't!) , but not so good with Johns and Marys.

 

[At home in NZ]

I have found a reasonable workaround on this for burials by adding a date but leaving the location field blank and putting the place name in as a Keyword instead. It doesn't seem to work for baptisms, though.

Have to admit I don't very often look for burials, Hints usually provide them for me. Don't get the wrong idea I do not rely on Hints for anything, my opinion of those has been aired elsewhere in the Forum.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I usually search with the 'Match all terms exactly' box ticked

I recall going 'through a phase' of ticking the 'Match all terms exactly' box, but it didn't last long. In fact I found it an absolute 'killer' with search algorithms merely ignoring anything not EXACTLY as the search entry. And broadening the searches via similar/soundex is a contradiction in terms with the 'match all exactly' box ticked. I rarely leave anything showing as 'exact', because invariably something, somewhere never will be.

The only thing I find that does produce results (usually after an unsuccessful first attempt even using similar or soundex) is to narrow further by omission or by filtering, or broaden with the use of 'wild cards'. I think the old rule of LESS is MORE the best.

 

[Pauline]

I think the old rule of LESS is MORE the best.

I think my interpretation of this would be to use fewer search terms rather than unticking 'Match all terms exactly'. Ancestry defaults to searching like that if you let it, but I'm afraid I got so fed up with wading through reams and reams of totally irrelevant results, that I gave up on it. I generally opt for wildcards rather than unticking the exact search.

I guess what struck me as particularly perverse here is that putting the year of baptism into the birth field always used to work, and when it ceased to do so, then I would put the date in the Any Event field instead, and pick Baptism from the dropdown. However, for the Oxfordshire register sets there is no date option in the Any Event field, so that scuppers that possibility.

 

[peter]

his wife is transcribed as 'Harold Roslina, Male' when the original is clearly Harriet Rawlins, Female

To be fair the original isn't clearly anything - it's a page from one of the registers that has been photocopied in black and white, making it much more difficult to interpret the information (think 1841 Census compared to 1911). Of course, when you know what the answer should be it always seems easier.

Other examples on the same page include Ambrose Bygathsbank (probably Brooksbank), William Aries and Allen Creneles (which, frankly, could be almost anything - Charles is my best guess).