GRONI records to On-line November 2013

[scotmum]

Either they were indeed forgetful, the church entered the wrong date, the church records were incorrectly transcribed by you (and I am sure you/whoever viewed the microfilm for you, were probably extremely careful, so this is not the case) or the dates have been entered incorrectly in the GRONI indexes. Given my earlier experience, the latter is not beyond consideration.

Elwyn's alternative is a good possibility too, though. 

[Elwyn Soutter]

Getting the correct date of birth is something that sometimes seems to agitate people researching today. It’s probably worth realizing that in the 1800s most people were supremely indifferent to their date of birth, and so errors were commonplace. In general, people in Ireland in the 1800s didn’t celebrate birthdays and often had little accurate idea of their ages. Alexander Irvine was born in 1863 in Antrim town and became a Minister living in the US. This extract from his book “The Chimney Corner revisited” perhaps explains why people often had to guess their ages:

“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”

[tillypeg]

Thanks for the lovely quote, Elwyn.  It does go some way to help me understand the whys and wherefores.  I've never come across so many discrepancies in one family though, even with my own ancestors living in tiny hamlets on the North Yorkshire moors or in the depths of Cornwall, though I believe some areas had registrars who travelled around their local areas, rather than being situated in an office.

[ansimi]

“My mother kept a mental record of the twelve births. None of us ever knew, or cared to know, when we were born. When I heard of anybody in the more fortunate class celebrating a birthday I considered it a foolish imitation of the Queen’s birthday, which rankled in our little minds with 25th December or 12th July. In manhood there were times when I had to prove I was born somewhere, somewhen, and then it was that I discovered that I also had a birthday. The clerk of the parish informed me.”

Great quote:) It reminded be of a bit of analysis I did once on a portion of my tree that is Northern Irish Protestant. I had about 1500 exact birth dates mostly 1860s - 1890s. Far and away the most popular birth date was July 12th (Orangemen's Day) followed by May 24th (Queen Victoria's birthday) and then December 25th. I assume some people used an anchor date that was close to the actual birthday but they could actually remember. I don't have enough data to do something similar on the Catholic parts of my tree but I wouldn't be surprised if certain Saint's days were very popular.

[scotmum]

I know some have commented elsewhere about the new 'digital registration numbers' that seem to have been allocated to the records.

Can some kind soul assure me that my mind is not playing tricks on me and that in the days before the online GRONI, the indexes at GRONI and the local Registrar offices did include volume and page numbers? I am certain I always received notes of same in past when I commissioned research.

Why do I ask? Well, having found a few mis-transcripts last week on the new online service, I had a couple of searches today for which no results were returned, despite me using the 'begins with' option and just first three initials and then also the 'variants' option with full name. Anyhow, I emailed GRONi to say I couldn't find two entries that should be there and asking could they be perhaps be mis-transcribed? How did I know they should be there, well, unlike those of last week,  because I had the Volume and Page Numbers for them. So, although the online search facility doesn't allow for inputting known volume and page numbers, I thought it would be helpful if I also included this info when I wrote to GRONI. Their reply:

Volume and page numbers were created by other organisations and bear no relationship to our references and do not assist with any search

This was in addition to them saying they did not undertake research (which is not what I asked for anyhow) and could not do a search unless I applied for a certificate or a search (I don't need a certificate and by virtue of purchasing credits to use online for searches, I assumed that I had 'applied for a search' ).

Yes, I agree, other organisations in recent years have made use of the Volume and Pages Numbers, but surely they were not created by those organisations, but rather were created when the original record was created and, in the past, were used as identifiers and/or additional identifiers at local Registrars and/or on GRONI indexes too? Or has my head gone into a spin with the various other 'teething' issues of last week and I am imagining this?

[Elwyn Soutter]

I know some have commented elsewhere about the new 'digital registration numbers' that seem to have been allocated to the records.

Can some kind soul assure me that my mind is not playing tricks on me and that in the days before the online GRONI, the indexes at GRONI and the local Registrar offices did include volume and page numbers? I am certain I always received notes of same in past when I commissioned research.

GRO Roscommon rely on the page and volume numbers. However GRONI has never used them (and have a completely different system of indexing the records). So unfortunately the volume and page numbers don’t work with them.

I think that GRONI has the originals books (for the 6 counties of Northern Ireland) and therefore if you drew out say volume 6 and looked up page 123, it would work, but in general they don’t use the original books. They scanned all the images onto their in-house system years ago, and I think the originals are stored away and only consulted in cases where the on-line image is not very legible. Their on-line system doesn’t record the volume and page numbers so that’s why that information is not of any use to them.

[scotmum]

Yes, I appreciate they use different indexing, but I wanted to re-assure myself that they do hold originals that are stored and show a Volume and Page number, so if something is obviously 'missing',  then those can be checked, and therefore under such circumstances, it is of use.

Anyhow, they shouldn't really have said that Volume and Page Numbers were 'created by other organisations' and that said Volume and Page numbers  'do not assist with any search', when they were created by virtue of the original records, which GRONI hold and which therefore could assist in a manual search.

[Elwyn Soutter]

I am not an expert on the GRONI filing system and don’t want to get bogged down in trying to explain or defend their position. All I do know is GRONI has never relied on the volume & page number system. It means nothing to their staff and quoting those details when  dealing with their office will get you nowhere.

Their system uses a prefix and the year and then a series of numbers and letters. So, for example, a marriage in 1880 might be indexed as M/1880/I1/267/2/210. That’s the only referencing system they are familiar with.

[tillypeg]

Scotmum, I am in the same boat as you - again!  I made a note of volume/page numbers (I think from either Ancestry or FamilySearch) a while ago and thought I might be able to 'flesh out' the info by finding the dates on Groni.  Some have obviously been mistranscribed and cannot be found.

If only there was the equivalent of FreeBMD