Genealogy Chat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you supposed to report transcribing errors to Ancestry? At least then these errors will be corrected for everyone to see.

Hi Rachel You can advise Ancestry but it takes them ages to correct it. Penny

I don't know whether this has already been mentioned, but you can post a name correction up on ancestry and it will eventually appear as an alternative name. Anyway, there is a mystery Mrs. Charlotte Laro mentioned in one of my family wills, so I always look for any Laro at all (there are hardly any of them about), and got excited as there seemed to be quite a crop of Laros on the 1841, but all I have looked at so far seem to be mistranscriptons of something boring like Law or Snow. Boo! Kate.

I had a dalton and under the head was written ditto so the rest of the family was down as ditton. I think they do a wonderfull job transcribing the images but it's nice to know the possibilities. Tracyx

I do a little bit of census transcription (on a volunteer basis of course), mainly because I just enjoy it, like detective work! Just wanted to mention, there were HEAPS of mistakes in the originals, especially the older ones - ie. 1841, that will cause major havoc now. For example, I'm doing the 1841 for some areas of Devon, and I've just found a whole chunk of families (about 2 full pages worth) have been enumerated twice, one after another! It appears that the enumerator swapped with someone else halfway through, and the second enumerator mustn't have checked where the first one was up to! So there you go. And how do you deal with weird mistakes like this as a transcriber? Good question, I am yet to find out the answer! :-) By the way, my direct line of rellies are nowhere to be found on the 1841 because the area they lived in is missing! So I can sympathise... :-) And some crazy mispellings for me are: Riece or Rees, instead of the correct Reece; Manakee instead of the correct Mannouch; Henon istead of Heron; and the list goes on...