Incorrect Census transcriptions on Ancestry

[bwgan ceredig]

I am grateful for this thread.  I knew, obviously, that such things as transcription errors existed, but I had no idea how bad things were.  Now I know why I am having such difficulties tracing people.

Will have a look at the tips on how to search...and try again.  Robert the Bruce had nothing on me

[Nessie]

Seems the majority are farming the work out to developing nations even our own government

The only ones you can be sure are not, are the ones that use volunteers to transcribe the census for the free sites.

[loo]

Other suggestions

Try 'stupid' vowel combination at the start of the surnames. C, S, H, F all seem to be commonly transcribed as L

Hence (all in 1901)

Mary Ltanley   (Stanley)

John Llanaghan  (Flanaghan)

Emily Llancy  (Clancy)

Fanny M Llaslett  (Haslett)?


Pauline

You can perhaps add
   Louisa Sligginson (should be Higginson) to this list.
   Perhaps they have corrected this by now;  I haven't     been back to check recently.

[Stovepipe]

As well as mistranscribing the ditto mark as a surname (either "Do" or "So"), they sometimes make the opposite error.  That is they misread a surname as a ditto mark, and transcribe it as whatever was above it, usually something completely unlike its true reading.

The surname I've seen this happen to is "Cox", transcribed as "Blackman".  Seeing the latter name in the index, it's very difficult to identify its true value.

Regards,
Stovepipe

[imison]

Hello

the county boundaries were altered in the 20th century and this has caused confusion although Genuki do try to give the old and new equivalents

Interesting theory about all these dittos. This is probably why I cannot find my great grandma Mary Ann Mann a widow on the 1901 census for Fulham. Iam now ploughing through the Fulham census to see if by chance she is there. I did find her son who does not come up on any list when you put in his name and I know I have the right chap--by job name and birth.
I have also come across many place names in the wrong county but as other people say it is because the transcribers dont know the U.K.

[avj]

I've just found in the 1861 census on Ancestry, records for people living in Norwich where the birthplace has been given as Norway.

The original image shows the enumerator has used an abbreviation which looks like 'Norw'

There's 1136 of them....

Adrian

[imison]

Insert Quote 
I've just found in the 1861 census on Ancestry, records for people living in Norwich where the birthplace has been given as Norway.

The original image shows the enumerator has used an abbreviation which looks like 'Norw'

There's 1136 of them....

Adrian 


Dear Adrian

That is an amazing amount of inaccuracies.


If this happened for Norwich, how many OTHER towns and villages are misrecorded?



I wonder if we, on rootschat, could compile a list of possible alternative names to look for so that we might then look for relatives under the WRONG addresses?

Just a thought

Best wishes

IMISON

[loo]

I think that's a good thought.  Where could we store them for reference?

[MaryA]

Easy - choose your place, probably on the Forum for "Census Lookups" or "Census and Resource Discussion" would be best, start the thread with a proper introduction and then ask the moderator to sticky it to the top but allow people to add to it.

Mary