The worst Ancestry transcription ever?

[Rosinish]

Just going through some registers from the 1660s-90s on Ancestry, and my mind was boggling at how bad the transcriptions were, I think I was correcting about 80% of the entries. The person doing it had clearly had no training in understanding old handwriting, whoever was in charge of them, clearly did not care how accurate the transcriptions were, and provided no assistance, and also, clearly Ancestry also does not care how bad the transcriptions are, just that 'they are done'. There are many paleography courses free online, there is really no excuse for it other than greed and laziness on the part of Ancestry and the companies they emply to do it .

I've always thought the best solution for transcribing would be for someone with a good knowledge of both area & general surnames, maps would assist too, as well as being able to read our language!

It seems the transcribing has either been done in other countries or by OCR.

Annie

[Sandrafamilytree]

I recently found a careless transcription.

The transcriber had recorded a male head of household, his wife and some children.

There was then a clear mark to indicate the start of the next household, which contained a female head of family and some children. The female was ‘married’ not ‘widowed’ and her occupation was ‘Mariner’s Wife’ (her husband presumably away at sea, as he appeared in the next census).

Even though the second household had totally different surnames clearly recorded, the transcriber had put both households together, so the female head of the second one was the wife of the first one (making two wives!)… and had given everyone in the second household the surname of the people in the first.

The people in the second household were people I had been looking out for and I came across them only by chance, when looking at information on a completely different family in the locality.

Every time I find myself saying ‘I can’t understand why I can’t find X when I’ve tried every spelling variation…’ I remember this example!

[Treetotal]

It really can be confusing when the wrong info has been written down. I spent a long time looking for my Great Grandmother who according to the 1901 census was born in Alford Lincs.
Finding no trace of her, I sent for the Marriage certificate...I was looking in the wrong area, she was born Salford Lancs

Carol 

[mcleeds]

My former neighbor was born in the 1960s in Northumberland to a Norwegian mother whose maiden name was 'Østhagen'.

Ancestry, in their infinite wisdom, apparently have dropped the 'Ø' and rendered the whole thing as 'Simagen' 

[coombs]

I found the transcript in the Ancestry search engine for the baptism of my ancestor in 1779 in Bolney Sussex was listed as:-

Bolney, Glasgow, Sussex, England.

[melba_schmelba]

Can this really be a human transcribing Marriage banns of St. Mark Victoria Park London, transcriptions up to 31st December, 1939, correct date. From then, we went to 1740

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/1623/images/47007_552340-00254

[andrewalston]

I've just had a quick browse of those Banns.

People seemed to be in a great rush to marry, and the clergymen seemed to be in a rush to get them to the altar. I notice one marriage at 2:15 on March 30th and the next listed at 2:30 the same day.

Was it the influence of wartime, or were they all worried about being transported back to the reign of George II ?   

[bearkat]

It's worth searching Ancestry for people with the surnames Ditto and Smallpox 

[LizzieW]