I have posted this twice before but not for two years so here goes:
The I.G.I. is a very valuable family history resource and it is one of the indexes that we can see for free, together with such as the 1881 censuses of England and of Wales.
There have been many questions on Rootschat as to how accurate the IGI is or why there appears top be conflicting information about the same person.
The I.G.I. comes to us from The Church of The Latter Day Saints – you may know them as the Mormons. New members are required to submit a family history and those histories are not always of even quality and accuracy. In addition the Church is involved in actual data extraction from old printed records of births, marriages and deaths – in many countries.
There is a method which is generally accurate to determine how accurate the data you see is likely to be.
Data shown as from the 1881 census may be taken to be as accurate as normal transcripts from the censuses. But we are interested in the International Genealogical Index data on
www.familysearch.org . When you are researching Frederick Burke, born England a variety of individuals will come up. You have selected the one you think is the man. Click on the underlined name and a screen comes up with data about his marriage, or christening or parentage. At the foot of that screen is a panel which gives Batch Numbers etc. This is the key. A batch number prefixed by C,J or K shows an extract from a Baptism Register. M or E will be from a Marriage Register. P will have been extracted from a printed copy of a register.
A, F or no letter prefix will be a Private Submission and these are often hazardous. They will contain lots of entries like “born about 1822” or “ born near Doncaster”. You can see that means there was no verifiable source. Often those are family legends or taken from family Bibles or old letters or journals.
Reverting back to the “good” prefixes like C,J,K,M,E.P you can now click in the next column on Source Call No. That will reveal the type of register that was used. The final check is to click on Printout Call. No. That will give you a summary of the sources used and what form they were in when consulted. Those, in turn, can be seen by arrangement with your nearest LDS Family History Centre.
This may all sound very formidable but I suggest you print this out and then look at the IGI for one of yours and follow this procedure through. It is most illuminating. It will also get you out of trouble when your ancestor has 2 entries with conflicting information. This will tell you which one is likely to be right.
