« Reply #15 on: Monday 26 September 05 13:23 BST (UK) »
I have recently discovered that Ancestry have transcribed the "do" as a surname SO and as a result, approx 1500 entries are mis-transcribed.
Good for you for spotting this Carole! Compounding the transcription error of "do" as Surname SO is surname SO being used to replace actual ditto marks! I have found families (for eg ISHERWOOD in Little Bolton, Lancashire in 1891) where wife and children have " to indicate ditto for the head of house surname -- but have been recorded as having surname SO.
In the case of the Isherwood family, all the children (and their mother) had " in place of their surnames, but only 3 of the 7 had the surname SO assigned to them by the indexer.
It's a wake up call for all of us to be sure to use wildcards when possible in search engines and be very creative and flexible in our search tactics. There's a tutorial on using Ancestry's search engines at the GenHelp site at
http://www.genhelp.org/?p=84
Simpson, Fuller, Page, Stead, Caspall, Philpott, Williams, Elvery, Whibley, Fryer/Friar, Sutton, Grant, Allard, Packman, Steadman, Norris, Drury, Boughton, Spratt, Munday, Rabbit, Wildbore