Sloppy Research, Sloppy Indexing, Sloppy Other Stuff

After working through a lot of DAR lineages recently, I've decided that there was a lot of sloppy work done. It's crazy. I can see why there are messages not to let anyone join on specific records because the original work is awful and quite simply WRONG.

Then I moved on to death certificates. I will say I really hate South Carolina death records because there are so many I should find that I can't. For instance, why can't I find the death certificate on Ancestry.com for William S. Percival who died Dec 13 1952 in York county, South Carolina. He's listed in the death index after all. Gee, there is a certificate #018219. What if I put that in the keyword field and search only York county? BINGO. Instead of William S. Percival, ANCESTRY.COM has him indexed as Percival S. William. Absolutely unforgivable. Clicking on the image should make it larger.

My third example is with Find-A-Grave. And yes, I know how easy it is to transcribe the wrong info, but, absent an image of the headstone, I would use the death certificate date which is 1931 and not 1930. They can't bury you without a death certificate, so I am betting on the official document and not someone's reading of a cemetery record or a stone.

I could go on ad nauseum about these errors. All it takes is one person to get the information wrong, then they feel the need to post it online so that other so-called "researchers" can copy this erroneous information. And they never bother to source it other than Ancestry World Tree submitted by ...

All these little sloppy things are really making it difficult for me to get my OCFRD* into high gear.


*Obsessive Compulsive Family Research Disorder.
Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes