St.Josephs,Stockport. Baptisms.

[Mike Campbell]

If anyone has been looking for Baptisms @ St.Josephs, Stockport then you are not going to find them. All the Baptisms have been indexed twice, incorrectly. They have been indexed as burials and to add further confusion they have also been duplicated and attributed to St.Peters, Staleybridge .Its no exageration to say there is probably thousands of incorrectly indexed baptisms, and thousands of incorrect burials indexed.No one is going to find them at best, and at worst go away satisfied with an incorrect burial. Its difficult to explain, so i'll try set out what we done and how we found out:
 Michael Sharkey born last quarter 1867, available on any GRO index, in Stockport. 4th ,November 1867, and his parents where Owen Sharkey and Bridget Dwyer. Michael can be found with his parents in later census, so went on to live for quite a bit. However searching through the records (Family Search/ Ancestry/ Findmypast) they (all) reveal that a "Michael Sharkey " was buried in St.Josephs, Stockport on 3rd Nov,1867. Parents: William Sharkey and Bridget Dwyre .
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J82P-KX3

Nothing too unusual about that so far. The records also reveal that a "Michael Sharkey" was buried on the same date (3rd,Nov 1867) @ St.Peters, Stayleybridge. Parents : Eugenis Sharkey and Bridget Dwyre Sharkey.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JZ8R-K4V

Now we're into raised eyebrow territory. The records (England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991)on Ancestry are transcribed records, so you get a text version with no image available. The Familysearch  records are also transcribed records with no image available. FindMyPast does however have an image available for the St.Peters, Stayleybridge burial. Examining the St.Peters burial reveals the record is actually a Baptism. Strange..........

Now, despite the FamilySearch burial record for St.Josephs, Stockport saying no image available a look through the Familysearch Cataloge reveals that St.Josephs records are available as unindexed images, which is odd as the records have apparently been indexed. Searching though the unindexed images of St.Josephs burials reveals there was no such burial.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/788410?availability=Family%20History%20Library

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-63KQ-1R?i=3&cat=788410


So i try another one i found in the images............ "Thomas McCormack 1867". Sure enough, same dance.... he was buried 17th November, 1867 in both churches with the same parents. You can just keep replicating this using the names you find in the Burials, its all the same result. Interestingly the film numbers for the St.Josephs and St.Peters records are the same film number : "2068242".

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J82P-KXF

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JZ8R-KHM

They are all baptisms mis indexed as Burials. I let Familysearch know, they don't seem interested , neither do Ancestry. They're not a data set i use, but you here in this section will use them so at least you now know where to find your missing records.
                                  Cheers.

[emeltom]

Thanks for taking the time to point this out. It cannot be the only place with wrongly indexed entries. I have looked at several transcribed baptisms on findmypast only to discover, when looking at the image, that it is in fact a burial. Similarly, the same thing has happened the other way round with so called burials transcribed as baptisms.

As you rightly say, the subscription site really are not interested in making corrections - they've already got your money so why bother.

Emeltom

[AdrianB38]

Mike - not my area either but you definitely deserve a vote of thanks.

Couple of points for info - in all that, we're actually taking about just one index at base. At least to start with. FamilySearch indexed the Cheshire PRs under contract to Chester RO for supplying to their contractor for the online Cheshire PRs - and that was FindmyPast of course. Ancestry also appear to have had copies of at least some of the FS indexes. So if you've found the same error on all 3 sites, at root it's down to FS.

You can talk to FS (as we have done on their GetSatisfaction site) until you're blue in the face about correction of indexes and nothing happens. They don't have an index correction facility. It's an ambition of theirs and has been for years....

Ancestry presumably allow the correction of single entries - where correction actually means adding alternative values. I'm assuming that the correction facility is a/v on a text only, no-image collection there.

FindMyPast will allow the correction of single entries - where correction means replacing the incorrect values.

Of course the potential issues with FindMyPast's indexes (and possibly Ancestry's) are that (a) you may not be able to correct something as fundamental as the type of event (I've not checked) and (b) individual correction isn't even appropriate - there needs to be a mass correction that can only be done by FindMyPast's data support team (or Ancestry's). If anyone were to try to raise this with FindMyPast, it's a dead cert that the first response will be "You can submit the correction yourself". At this point, I grit my teeth and reply suggesting that they read the initial problem again and submit it to their data support team. Usually the 2nd go gets it past the "Read a script" stage. (Don't be too hard on them - I've been in IT Support and the first line response team is always just reading the script - and is probably not allowed to do anything else. But they should recognise when to escalate...)

I've never tried to submit this sort of error to FindMyPast so have no idea how easy it is for them to correct without losing the link to the images. It may not be simple for them to do. It certainly isn't the only batch wrongly placed - it is a classic error in FS-derived indexes that the location at the start of the film gets applied to all batches on that film. There are some Wybunbury events that are attributed to Wilmslow, for instance. (Or vice versa?)