The worst Ancestry transcription ever?

[mckha489]

I don't usually like to comment on these, conscious that some of my own transcriptions may be dodgy but cannot resist with this one who apparently  was born in Sale, USA

Well.... the letters U S A do appear consecutively but ....

[HughC]

To me the word 'relict' conjures up an image of something discovered at the back of the fridge, probably already growing whiskers.  It's an unfortunate word to use for a widow, yet anyone who has had anything to do with family history knows that that is what is meant when it appears in a death notice in an old newspaper.

For the transcribers and indexers at fAnciestree, however, "relict of XY" means he was her father.  Let's keep incest in the family!

[aghadowey]

Can't blame Ancestry for this one I found this morning 

Found a death on Irish Genealogy site (Irish births, marriages, deaths) for an unknown daughter when searching for death of son I knew died before 1911 (both children died from scarletina a few days apart). So, next step was to search for birth of little Emily. She died in 1906 aged 4 so thought it should be 1901-1903. Nothing under 'Emily Ross' so tried 'Ross' then just 'Emily' and finally found he I in the index- Emily GORTFAD mother- MCUSSTER instead of Emily Ross mother McMaster!
Transcriber has put father's residence (Gortfad) as the surname and created a fairly unique surname for the mother-
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1902/01926/1745868.pdf

Sadly, the parents seem to have lost many of their children at birth or shortly after.

[jbml]

Sadly, the parents seem to have lost many of their children at birth or shortly after.

This is something we need to keep always in mind when reading statistics about "average life expectancy" in different ages.

"The average life expectancy was 45" does NOT mean that a man of 50 was "an old man", necessarily. If neonatal mortality rates are high, then this pulls down the all-population average life expectancy to a considerable degree ... but those who made it into double digits often lived to 70 or 80.

A much more useful metric than whole population average life expectancy is "average life expectancy at age 5", which strips out all the infant mortality and tells us what the rest could reasonably look forward to.

[jbml]

The winner here though is the wife's birthplace of Plympton transcribed as Phempler.

I think I can do FAR better than that.

I spent ages scouring Hampshire records for an ancestor whose place of birth was transcribed as "Southampton".

Eventually, in utter frustration I took a long, hard look at the original manuscript and asked myself "what else COULD it have been?". I came up with the possibility of "Som[erset] Taunton"

So I looked in Somerset ... and there she was!

[coombs]

I found a woman in London whose birthplace was Dorset, Middle Gagginge. 

Again the enumerators probs never heard of these places if they were many miles away from where they lived and may have misheard, hence why census can give a parish that never existed. And if you look at the original, it says the same, or very near the same, but the transcription can still be funny.

One man gave "Kent, Maderlane" as his place of birth.

[andrewalston]

One man gave "Kent, Maderlane" as his place of birth.

I bet if you look at the image the original will clearly say "Maidstone".

Enumerators usually made a decent job of filling in their sheets (although some have terrible writing). One of mine, born in Brinscall, has his place of birth in one census recorded as "Brinscow", which is an excellent attempt at the local pronunciation.

There were exceptions. One of my ancestors, known as Bella Bullough, has her first name "corrected" in 1841 to "Isabella". She was actually "Arabella". In 1851 her first name is down as "Bellow", though I don't know how loud her voice was. 

Our main beef is with those modern transcribers, who don't make any attempt to get things right, and apparently have no incentive to do so.

[coombs]

One transcription says someone was born in "Suffolk, Duxmonday". I thought that must be Saxmundham.

[Cathymjp]

I remember spending hours looking for my Great, Great, Great Grandfather on two censuses.  He had never moved so could not understand why I could not find him.  Eventually it turned out to be a transcription error on A.......  Arblaster was transcribed as Sollander