Hello
Yes, some people did have two written signatures too, one of my ancestors used two.
I have several specimens of my mystery Ancestor's, that he used when signing business documents and another when signing on church documents and his Will (identical, although frail on his Will).
Errors in Family Trees
After seeing some terrible errors in family trees online, I can't stress enough, that where you can afford to get a scan of the original document and you wish to, obtain it.
You often see information not transcribed, you get a general feel for the document and sometimes the witnesses can be related and be identified too.
At some places the cost of obtaining a partial transcription of a document is £30 per half hour, versus the cost of the scan of the whole document is sometimes little different in cost, sometimes an image scan of the whole document is cheaper and I can spend time reading it several times (if need be), rather than somebody hurrying to read it and writing it down. Often another person types it in, from another person's handwriting too.
I'm dead against the transcription, you don't want to get back 500 years, then somebody come along and produce an original document, confirming a more recent error, which completely demolishes your tree, making it null and void.
Mark
Yes Mark nobody is disputing that and in fact most of us stress the same but we were discussing the cost involved for the GRO & online providers to digitise, host & index such scans which makes it quite a slow procedure even for the large companies.
Transcripts which are often easy to obtain and cheaply available are a stop gap method of providing the information required.
You mention you are dead against transcription, does that mean you only use the 1911 census?
Does that mean you refuse to use parish registers as most of these are transcripts of day books and the majority of early parish registers are transcripts of the earlier paper parish registers transcribed onto vellum?
We as family historians have to be realistic and use the available records in our research, but that does not mean we have to be careless we attempt to confirm our assumptions by using as many alternative records as possible to confirm our assumptions.
For instance for roughly the first 25 years of my research I had to use my own transcriptions to compile my family tree (as did other similar researchers), these transcriptions were taken from original registers held by the superintendent Registrars and I paid through the nose to access them and transcribe the relevant entry. That availability was stopped in 1974/5.
The reason we did that was because it made our research more accurate than relying on the transcribed copies of copies provided by the GRO.
In a similar manner researchers would transcribe from original parish registers in churches and Diocese Archives or bought microfilm copies of the registers to browse at home.
Since the online companies have been digitising these registers I now have the luxury of being able to add an image of the record on my family history database to confirm research I possible did 40 or 50 years ago for those interested in my research in the future.
In other words yes, it would be good to have all original records available online but we have to be realistic and realise that costs time and money.
In the meantime be thankful the many generous people have given their time and often their money too making information available to others by transcribing them.
Cheers
Guy
