Genealogy Chat

Paul Trouble is that capital H could look like anything - Hall Hill Mall Moll Holl Ball Rall Tall your guess as good as mine! Can you use the first name and date place of birth? Sometimes I've found people by looking for immediate relatives. I also lost some of my Gray relatives and as its such a popular name I tried looking for Gray + place of birth Limpenhoe. Found all except 2 - one was mistranscribed Limperhoe and one was Limperhal. It's taken me most of 2 years to get all the Grays and I have still got some people missing. Fortunately none of them is a direct relative, so I am not too bothered. Just hope 1911 will be done with a gazetteer and linked to a database of surnames! nell nell

Thanks for the tip. Couldn't find a family although I knew they were living in a small town at the time of the census. I put in my ancesters first name (rather unusual) and his age, and where he was born, left the surname blank and up it came, the surname was spelt completly differently, almost back to front. This is the third mistake I have found, I hope they sort this problem out soon.

Please spare a thought for the transcribers. I have just started transcribing for freecen, the information I am working on is on mircofiche ( my choice ), and not only is the writing difficult to read sometimes, but often the enumerators have writen on the forms and put lines though entries, almost obliterating some entries. We are also advised to copy adressess, surnames and forenames, precisely, even if it looks wrong. Remember, it's easier to read when you know what it should be. Susan

Susan Yes I agree. I've had great difficulty trying to read the 1841 in particular. Sometimes I have been amazed at how well a transcriber has done when they haven't known what its supposed to say. It's just jolly annoying when you DON'T know and the whole point of searching the census is to find out what your missing Bloggs' relative's first name or place of birth was and you can't read it! nell