Middlesbrough not Middlesborough

[Mart 'n' Al]

I have been searching for ancestors in Middlesbrough. On Ancestry there seems to be little differentiation between the correct spelling and the incorrect spelling. If I search for George Smith born in 1826 I find him amongst 177 hits. If I include either spelling of Middlesbrough as a residence he is not listed. Be aware of this oddity.

Here on Rootschat if you search for the name, there are 35 pages of hits, 10 of those pages have the incorrect spelling.

This confusion is not restricted to Ancestry.

Martin

[GrahamH]

I think there are two points here.

I've lived in Middlesbrough for a little over 50 years and the misspelling occurs time after time in the media and generally.

The Ancestry search is a different matter. Much of my family history is centred around Glossop in Derbyshire. I find that to obtain PR images of events, rather than just transcripts, I have to search with "Exact to county" rather than "Exact to this place" checked. That is irritating because I then have to sift through results from other areas of Derbyshire (and the Glossop one often comes way down the page).
It appears to be because the parish registers are indexed under Derbyshire rather than including the individual parishes in the indexing. I currently have an enquiry in to Ancestry exploring that.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Graham, I totally agree with you. I even wonder if this thread is in the wrong place as it isn't purely about Middlesbrough and Yorkshire history. I really can't understand the computer logic in the results that I was getting. I worked in IT until I retired and I understand the procedures of searching. Although Middlesborough is only a small part of my research, it did come as a surprise to me the day that I realised how it should be spelled.  Ironically one of the family name's I am researching is Loughborough, and there is a whole branch which at some point in their history somehow had it changed it to Loughbrough.

Equally worrying is the fact that I got 177 hits until I specified either spelling of Middlesbrough as well, and got 0. Ironically I was searching in Middlesborough for alternative and incorrect spellings of another name and that is what made me discover these anomalies.

Martin

[GrahamH]

We have IT in common Martin
I spent 30 years or so in IT until work on information security took me into the fields of Data Protection and more general regulatory legislation.

It appears that the people who implemented the Ancestry searching don't have the same understanding of the procedures. I've just been running several searches on a particular family and they have been very hit and miss.

For instance a search for Ellen Wood didn't find a census record in which she is recorded as Ellin, even though I specified "Exact, sounds like & similar" for the forename. I only found her because I searched using FindMyPast as well.

[Mart 'n' Al]

My  Middlesbrough searching has also been severely affected by the fact that the enumerator had atrocious handwriting, and even names that I can read, are only legible from prior knowledge. I can search for some members of the family and find them while others produce nothing.

Martin

[CarolA3]

The Ancestry search is a different matter. Much of my family history is centred around Glossop in Derbyshire. I find that to obtain PR images of events, rather than just transcripts, I have to search with "Exact to county" rather than "Exact to this place" checked. That is irritating because I then have to sift through results from other areas of Derbyshire (and the Glossop one often comes way down the page).
It appears to be because the parish registers are indexed under Derbyshire rather than including the individual parishes in the indexing. I currently have an enquiry in to Ancestry exploring that.

Graham, have you tried browsing?

Go to 'Card Catalogue' and enter 'Derbyshire church' in the title box.  Hit the search button and you get the four sets of PRs for Derbyshire.  Don't use the usual search form - look to the right of it.  The 'Browse this collection' box has a dropdown list of parishes.  Select Glossop (or wherever) and a list of date ranges appears.  Choose the one you think will include your event, then hop around the pages.

Hope this helps a bit,
Carol

[GrahamH]

Graham, have you tried browsing?

Go to 'Card Catalogue' and enter 'Derbyshire church' in the title box.  Hit the search button and you get the four sets of PRs for Derbyshire.  Don't use the usual search form - look to the right of it.  The 'Browse this collection' box has a dropdown list of parishes.  Select Glossop (or wherever) and a list of date ranges appears.  Choose the one you think will include your event, then hop around the pages.

Hope this helps a bit,
Carol

Thank you Carol. Yes, I have tried - or maybe, more accurately, "resorted to" - browsing
The point is, though, that we should not have to do that as the images should be properly indexed in the first place.

[CarolA3]

I agree, we shouldn't have to work round their deficiencies

My research area isn't Derbyshire, but Ancestry thoughtfully came with some other search problems to stop me getting bored.  I've found quite a few entries that they'd tried to hide by mangling the transcriptions, hence my habit of browsing after the usual searches.  My favourite so far is 'FRY' which they represented as 'SOX'.

Carol

[Mike in Cumbria]

What about this place then?