Indexing and Spelling Doesn't Count, Etc.

As I sit here working on census, trying to find William A McIntosh on the 1880 census, I am reminded of my friend Mrs Curtin who was the librarian at my kids' elementary school. At that time they called the library, the instructional materials center. I think they took political correctness a little too far with that one. At any rate, when we were discussing Mac and Mc when filing cards in the old card file, we discussed how they actually meant the same, but that Mac was before Mc and that consistency was extremely important in filing.

So I sit here and wonder what the heck Ancestry is thinking of when they show Mac Intosh, MacIntosh, Mc Intosh, McIntosh. And you will find that with all of their Macs or Mcs. It makes me crazy. First of all, if you use a wild card search, it doesn't work with a space. Or say you want to find all MacIntyres/Mac Intyres or McIntyres/Mc Intyres in Huron county, Michigan - you not only have to watch for misspellings such as McIntire, you have to watch for that danged space.

Consistency is so important when working with records. You have to document the actual name changes, the misspellings, the way you do your sources. Can't indexers do the same thing?

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

Indexing - Should I Laugh or Cry?

Now that Ancestry has seemed to clean up it's stupid census link errors, I have a bone to pick about the indexing.

It seems the trained monkeys who are indexing census, have invented a place called "Gland of Malta." Seriously:

Frank Smith:
Birth Year:	abt 1793
Age in 1870:	77
Birthplace:	Gland of Malta
Home in 1870:	Castleton, Richmond, New York
Race:	White
Gender:	Male

It's funny, but when I look at the link, I see "Island of Malta." Stuff like this really tries my patience.

But imagine my surprise when I found another record, this a death certificate.

This is what I found in the indexing:

Name:	Not Named Smith
Death Date:	27 Dec 1916
Death Location:	Franklin
Residence Location:	Franklin
Age:	71
Gender:	Male
Ethnicity:	White
Birth Date:	15 Jun 1845
Birth Location:	Harrison
Father's Name:	Frank C Smith
Father's Birth Location:	Kentucky
Mother's Name:	Agnes B Chinn
Mother's Birth Location:	Kentucky

I mean, really, who goes through 71 years without a first name? No one. His name, Frank B. Smith is clearly written on the death certificate.

Now, if I am looking for a death certificate and I see something like "Not Named," I tend to skip over it, figuring it is a stillborn. Of course, a closer look shows that the Not Named is 71 years old and a closer look shows his name clearly written.

I still don't know whether to laugh or cry!


Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

Distractions

Are you as easily distracted as I am? Sometimes it is a good thing and sometimes it is just, well, distracting.

Yesterday I was attempting to search for a Charles Isham in New York, born about 1824 and died before 1909. I was able to find him on the 1900 Census in Schoharie county, New York, which is where I expected him to be. Only the indexer (for Ancestry) has him listed as Charles QEHERU. 

Has anyone actually ever done indexing for Ancestry? Rumor has it they are using people from other countries. Other rumors are that they are using OCR (optical character recognition.) Personally, I think trained chimps could do a better job on indexing.

Oh, but I am getting distracted, again.  What I meant to say is that after finding Charles & his wife, Mary on the 1900 census, I went to the Old Fulton Postcards site to search for Charles Isham. I found lots of hits, but they weren't the right Charles Isham. I kept getting hits for Mary Lincoln and her husband Charles Isham. Lots of hits. This is Mary Lincoln, granddaughter of Abe and oldest daughter of Robert Lincoln. Normally, I would just ignore these hits, but since I have a connection to the Lincolns, I retrieved Mary Lincoln Isham's obituary and the announcement of their marriage. If you've ever had occasion to search for newspaper articles on this site, you will know that it can take a while for the site to display the search results.  When this happens, I try to open another tab in Internet Explorer and check out the genweb page or any other site that pops to mind to narrow down the search parameters.  Often I get distracted there too!

Now I think I should further distract myself and go hunting for Charles Isham, husband of Mary Lincoln, to see if I can find an obituary for him, since he predeceased her.

What was I working on again?