Beware and compare census transcriptions!

[helenwyler]

:confused A few personal examples of the folly of only reading one transcription of census returns! I know there are going to be errors in originals and transcriptions but...
1) One ancestor was completely missing from one census transcription, but included in another.
2) Birthplace of one ancestor given as Nognt, Sutherland. I assumed this to be a weird 'Tongue', till looked up another transcription where it was given as Asynt [sic]. You can see the similarity, but what was that enumerator/transcriber on?
3)One ancestor's age given as 44, b. 1807. This is the daughter of a 50-year-old man! On another transcription her age is given correctly as 14, b. 1807.

This is doubtless old news to you seasoned orgers and family researchers, but might be useful to naive novices (like me!). Happy weekend, Helen

[cliffhbuber]

It sure can be frustrating.

Some of the older handwritten returns are very hard to read and decipher caauing the transcriber to guess at the letters.

Some letters! Some guess!

all the best in your research.

[Angela]

One of my earliest mistakes was with my gt grandfather -on my gt grandparents' marriage cert of 1872, it looked to me as if he was 27, so I was searching for a Robert Munro aged about 5 or 6 in 1841.

I could only find a Robertina and wondered if that had been an error...which sent me off on a false trail....[evil]

Looking again at the marriage cert it seemed possible Robert had been 22, not 27....so I started looking for a very small Robert Munro in 1841!

The SP index came up only with a 3 year old - but in desperation I looked up the original document- and there he was aged 3 weeks...living at Sarclet.
Quite a glow of satisfaction to get that cleared up. :lol:

SP are very good at crediting you if the info they provide is incorrect (eg index and record don't match) or if a document proves to be too faint to read.

I've found (the hard way) that it can pay to look at other records on the same page - not only can twins pop up, but I've also found double weddings, and in one case a couple who died within a days of each other. Playing about with freecen, you can find some interesting info about the next door neighbours as well - and sometimes that joins up with your family too.

I've only recently started looking up OPRs, without much confidence, they are hard to decipher and I'm trying to keep to a budget and not get too carried away.... You probably all know that feeling "it must be out there so I must keep looking"...it can be so frustrating, but at times very satisfying, to find another piece of the jigsaw.

[Oddquine]

I've found that "official" things like marriage certificates after 1855 need to be taken with a hefty spoonful of salt as well.

I spent two years looking for my paternal great great grandfather in Inverness, who, according to my great grandfather's wedding certificate, was a John Fraser, though there was no mother detailed at all. When I eventually found his death certificate, his father was Donald Fraser, not John. :confused

Methinks the minister forgot to ask?

And the great grandfather on my Inverness granny's side, contrary to the info on both his marriage and death certificates, was illegitimate but had a different surname from his mother in censuses. I shudder to think how many years and how much money I spent looking for his parents! [evil]

[helenwyler]

Thanks for your support Cliffhbuber - by the way I've just finished reading Annie Proulx's 'Shipping News'. What a starkly beautiful book. I'd quite like to try a Nova Scotian squidburger!
Helen

[helenwyler]

;) Angela - good advice about peeking in on the neighbours!

I know what you mean by "glow of satisfaction". I felt like a proper detective this week once I realised the early censuses only show who was present on the night of the census and not always their relationship to the head. This helped me clear up the tangled web of McDonalds and I found my 8-year-old ggrandmother had been staying with relatives (same surname) that night.

I know what you mean about spending a small fortune on OPR - but at least it enabled me to locate my ggranny (there were 6 others with same name & similar age in parish) by eliminating her as 'daughter'. And also add another name, Gunn, to my ancestry!

Helen

[helenwyler]

:eek: Dear Oddquine - I shall definitely treat marriage certs with scepticism.

Haven't seen any yet as I'm doing pre 1855 stuff at the moment. What puzzles me is when a birth/baptism is entered as 'lawful daughter' but then can't track doen any marriage banns etc.

Also, though some birth/baptism entries (I'm looking at 1770) are qualified as 'begotten out of wedlock' and my ancestor isn't, I still can't find marriage evidence. Perhaps they were pulling the wool over the Rev's eyes, or maybe I just need some reading glasses!

Helen

[Angela]

I have some missing mothers too, oddquine -which is odd, you'd think they'd be certain of the mother if not the father ;)

I've found quite a lot of children (mostly, but not all, illegitimate) farmed out to their maternal grandparents while their mothers have gone back into service. The only thing is -the sons of the family must have also been sowing wilds oats...but I will never know who they were probably as the children will have been looked after by their mothers' families...

This thread has revived my interest, so thank you all! It's been flagging a bit lately because I know the next thing I really need to do is get more organised before doing anything more exciting....and spending any more money!

My next problem, apart from the missing mothers, is my 2 x gt grandfather, also Robert Munro. I'm trying to sort out who his mother was -a Gunn, but 2 possible and quite different Christian names, and a tangle of info from death cert, census info and IGI...and a consequent confusion over the siblings too.

I think I'll post this puzzle (and maybe some others) for you all to think about when my brain is a bit clearer....and yes, I do think that after all this peering at documents I do need some stronger reading glasses! [evil]

[Rosemary Skea]

As a transcriber for FREEREG and a checker for FREECEN, earlier returns can be very difficult to read for various reasons - writing of the enumerator, poor quality of the filming of the document - in the OPR, often the pages were not opened out properly which has resulted in the information at the end of the rows on one page and the begining of the rows on the opposite page being lost. Also one must remember that the individuals doing the early writings would often write the word as it sounded, which in dialect may have been very different from the word as we know it today. For example WEYDALE - Weidale, Wydale, Wydal are examples of the different spelling of the same place over a period of 150 years. Transcribers are also required to transcribe as is, not translate to the present day spelling. Enumerators also frequently made mistakes - they were only human like us. If you compare ages of persons in the 1841, 1851 and 1861 census, you will be lucky to find 10 years difference in their ages between the years - they were often rounded off to the nearest 5, and when you have a family of 10 , it must have been difficult to keep trace of them!!!! In the 1841 census I am sure many older generation would not have remembered when they were born - was it a necessary piece of information at that time.

I have often wondered about the "lawful" child, as many marriages are not registered in the OPRs . Maybe they couldn't afford to pay the fee to the Session. I have just completed the transcription of the Thurso births for FREEREG - almost 13,000 entries - many of the pages in the early 1700's were totally illegible due to fading of the documents - and less than 3,000 marriages for the same period. But then you also find the reverse situation - marriages recorded but no children !

I suppose all these unknowns will keep us guessing and striving to find answers for some time to come.

Rosemary




:confused A few personal examples of the folly of only reading one transcription of census returns! I know there are going to be errors in originals and transcriptions but...
1) One ancestor was completely missing from one census transcription, but included in another.
2) Birthplace of one ancestor given as Nognt, Sutherland. I assumed this to be a weird 'Tongue', till looked up another transcription where it was given as Asynt [sic]. You can see the similarity, but what was that enumerator/transcriber on?
3)One ancestor's age given as 44, b. 1807. This is the daughter of a 50-year-old man! On another transcription her age is given correctly as 14, b. 1807.

This is doubtless old news to you seasoned orgers and family researchers, but might be useful to naive novices (like me!). Happy weekend, Helen

[trinkie]

Hallo Oddquine,

I have found this before - regarding the '' John'' and I have to remind myself that so many Scottish men were called Jock, that the family grew up thinking that John was his name, and that's what was put on a certificate.

''Jock'' was used a lot especially in the army.

Good luck,

[helenwyler]

Thanks for sharing your expertise, Rosemary.

The difficulties of a transcriber must be great sometimes, and it's so wonderful we have access to these resources online.

Apologies if I sounded facetious. My main point was that it's worth crosschecking transcriptions, as they can vary considerably.