Today I went to my local LDS Centre because a film I had ordered (2 months ago) had just arrived. This film was different to any I had viewed before as it was the film of a transcript (from 1901) of the church registers. The disadvantage of this is that any transcription can involve errors, however, the transcriber assured we readers that every entry had been double checked against the original. The advantages included the fact that the manuscript was typed and a lovely lady from Glasgow had created an index for every name in the register (1555-1815) both people and locations.
There were large numbers of my family on the film so I slowly browsed, looking at each page. I noticed that a number of servants were simply described as "Servant of James Princely buried" - interesting if this was an ancestor one was trying to track, plus the usual descriptive comments re children baptised with no father in evidence. Then I got to a page that was illegible - the film or paper had moved & it was completely blurred. I checked the page number against my index and ahhhhhhh - I had 3 references on this page.
Why does this always seem to happen - I had just passed 23 pages without one of my family mentioned - so I shall have to hope that a film of the original or a BT may be available. Meanwhile there are lots of other interesting anecdotes and reports included on the film, so I hope no more illegible pages, when I return next week.
Trish