Family trees

Tipsntreats

PasturesNew That is fine, I know what you mean. I could not keep up with the garden fence.
You have already contributed so much. I wanted to invite some others to share their stories, but as you rightly state, it then gets out of hand. It is only three more though.

Tips x

Tipsntreats

Pastures I forgot to say. I knew the ducking stool was a fake. There is no way anyone could be ducked there. it is just a stream. I am going to find that grave. The old court house is orginal isn't it?

To all: I researched the origins of the surname Pendleton today. This was a surname on my Maternal side long ago. It comes from Lancashire. They were living there back then. Going back even further, it stated in Pendle Hill. Now I wonder if there were any witches in my family back then?
Tips x

lillibet_dripping

(My daughter was taught science by a Mrs.Pendleton)

SailorSam

When i first started to do my tree was after my Mum died. I knew if i'd done it before she would have been upset about it. My Mum got divorced when i was only a toddler and she never ever spoke about my Dad, growing up you could almost feel the hatred in the air and i knew it was something not to talk about. I remember finding photos of my Mum standing on the church steps in her white dress, and they'd been torn in half. So i never even knew what this fella looked like. The only time i remember my Mum saying anything, when i was little if i'd been naughty she said once ......... You're just like your bl00dy Father.
So after she died i started the tree.
I found out little bits, and found a local address for his Mum & Dad (if they were still there). He may well be dead now himself but i don't think i would have knocked on the door, reminding him he still owes me Christmas presents.

milasavesmoney

Tips, I belong to Ancestry and have many of my tree pages transcribed there.

I'm are real stickler for finding the correct information from source material. One of the LDS library managers told me that their information online that has been typed is correct. We were talking about census records. He said they have three different people check them before they are finalized to be uploaded. I was able to show him two mistakes within the hour. He said perhaps your tree is wrong. I told him I actually had bible records written by the person in one instance and marriage and deed records for the other. Both instances the names typed for the record were totally wrong. i.e. One said Yancy and the name was Young.

lillibet_dripping

I'm going to the Essex records office on Tuesday. If anybody would like a 'look up' please pm me.

Mojisola

milasavesmoney wrote: »

We were talking about census records. He said they have three different people check them before they are finalized to be uploaded. I was able to show him two mistakes within the hour.

Both instances the names typed for the record were totally wrong. i.e. One said Yancy and the name was Young.

Have you looked at the original as well as the transcription?

Transcribers have to put down what they can see, not what they think the name or place probably is.

I've found a range of spellings of family names but, after looking at the originals, I would have transcribed the names just the way the transcribers did. Either the spelling in wrong in the original document or the handwriting makes an 'o' look like an 'a' and other similar variations.

You can report any 'mistakes' like this to Ancestry and they will add the correction to the transcription.

PasturesNew

Mojisola wrote: »

Transcribers have to put down what they can see, not what they think the name or place probably is.

I've highlighted that bit in case others skipped over it.

Transcribers have to write down "what they see". Of course, seeing is in the eye of the beholder. A random stranger will see one thing, a local another. This is why I don't transcribe registers from outside of my personal areas of intimate knowledge.

A transcriber might never have set foot in a county they are transcribing... so won't know how things are spelt, sometimes are spelt, etc. With some dodgy handwriting (remember they were poking at bits of parchment in an unlit church, with a bit of stick and a feather and a bowl of ink ... sometimes in the freezing midwinter), you really need to know the local names, placenames and what's likely to expect ....

It is essential to be able to view the originals for those moments when you're "sure he must've been here...." but a text search of input from a transcriber didn't yield anything.

I've even had to correct FreeBMD. I was looking for somebody specific the other week and they didn't show up at all. I took a look at the "original" typed list and could clearly see that the transcriber must've simply had a cross-eyed moment as the correct entry was clearly there, typewritten, to see.

Search results tell us what's there that's exact/similar to what we're searching for.

Only inspection of the originals can tell you if the transcriber missed a whole line out, or even a page .... or got their fingers muddled, or mis-read something written on a bitterly cold January night in the dark.

THIRZAH

About 20 years a distant cousin in New Zealand put our family tree on the LDS database. Since she was only working from the records avaliable in the LDS centre near her she made a bad mistake. When I was checking the tree against the actual parish records I found the mistake and have double checked my information not only from the records and bishop's transcripts but from wills and gravestones. I can always tell when I look at our Family Tree on Ancestry or other sites if people have bothered to check information or have just copied it.

Tipsntreats

I have started my husbands tree on Ancestry. Family secrets and information passed down through the generations, is like Chinese whispers, it gets distorted.My husbands cousins started the paternal side, and got it all wrong. There was a story that someone married an Indian woman. Gosh it turned into Cherokee and all sorts of nonsense. I did find a census, on it she says she is from the West Indies. I had to get help from my genealogist friend. For goodness sake she was Welsh. Now this is something to do with the British Army posted abroad in the Empire days. I just cannot find her birth record, or even know where to start. I also know she died quite young, but, never found a death record in this country. The last census found her in Essex. The next there is her husband in Scotland, a widower with a young son (husbands grandfather).
So I am no expert in tracing everything, but it seems I am amongst friends.
Going to post a second now as I want to relate to some new posts.