Your Favourite Census Mistranscriptions!

[genjunction]

When I purchased the 1881 census a neighbour asked me to look for her Sarah Horsfield in the Drax area.  Sarah was not there nor was any of her family- ok she'd moved was the first reaction.

[genjunction]

When I purchased the 1881 census a neighbour asked me to look for her SARAH HORSFIELD in the Drax area.  Sarah was not there nor was any of her family- ok she'd moved was the first reaction.  All variations of the name were tried we even tried looking for Sarah in Drax - still no luck.

When the 1871 census came out we searched Drax, picked on a name and searched for them in the 1881 census via the neighbours option.

Bingo, Sarah and her family were listed as HORSEFEEDER

well, would you have thought to try Horsefeeder as a variant of Horsfield ?  No ! neither would we, but it took us about 5 years to find her, but find her we did along with her parents and siblings. 

Thank goodness for the neighbours option.

Carol Sklinar
www.wakefieldfhs.org.uk
Wakefield Family History Sharing

[Kevwood]

Paul i did the western sahara thing and found thousands from durham and looked at original and it doesn't say anything even remotely close, how the hell did they manage to get western sahara and how did you spot it???

Kev.

[Paul E]

Hi Kev

I was looking for one of my ancestors in Durham and he came up listed as Western Sahara, which sounded faintly  improbable unless they had discovered coal there!
I'm not sure why there are so many indexed like this, unless it is some form of abbreviation that the indexers have used that automatically gets picked up.

Now, if it had been Canada one could almost understand it, given all those Winnipegs, Ontarios and Quebecs in Durham!

best wishes

Paul

[Paul E]

Bingo, Sarah and her family were listed as HORSEFEEDER

Well done in finally tracking this down though!
Horsefeeder sounds like it might just make the Censuswhack listings ... 
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,29743.180.html

best wishes

Paul

[AngelaR]

One branch of my family comes from Shaw Hill, Melksham. I found some just now in the 1901 census, one row apart on the same page, listed as -

Stav Hill Fredteslan
and
Hill Melbolen

same enumerator, same (clear) handwriting 

Angela

[Biker]

Aaaaaaaaaaarrgh!

After much hunting in 1861 at 1837online I found my Tyrrell family mistranscribed as Lunt !!!  True it is not very clear on the census either though 

Jonathan

[Biker]

Yet another famous one from 1837online, my Mary Juniper transcribed as Mary Jumper - maybe she liked a bit of knitting in her spare time 

Jonathan

[deadants]

my Great grandmother's married name was McCooey but she was widowed only two months after she married. she got married a couple of years later. On the marriage certificate for name of Bride they have it down as McCoohy, now on the Western Australian BDM register she is listed as McCooky. Sound like something you get with a cup of coffee at a certain hamburger chain.

deadants