Transcripts and Mistakes!

[AmandaP]

I am currently in a bit of a battle with freereg.org.uk. A rootschat member pointed out that they had my great x 4 grandmother listed as a spinster when she married my 4 x great grandfather. She was in fact a widow. I got onto the freereg website and marked the error, pointing out that the original parish register and original banns make no reference to my great x 4 grandmother being a spinster. The reply back was basically the record doesn’t say she was a widow and “Phillimores said spinster so she was a spinster.”

Whilst I believe that Phillimores is a wonderful resource and it was a huge undertaking back in the day, it is still a secondary resource and needs to be treated as such. It should not be put up on a pedestal and it should never be treated as superior to the primary resources.

I was not asking freereg.org.uk to mark my great x 4 grandmother as a widow, just that they remove “spinster.” It is false and misleading.

I find transcription errors on ancestry.com on a weekly basis. Often it is simply because the transcribers have not accounted for the following year often starting after March in the old parish registers, but sometimes other errors also. From this I learnt to always look at original records when available. Just because Phillimores was transcribed a century ago, does not mean it is immune to human error, just like ancestry.com is not.

I think this is a good reminder for researchers to always use primary resources first when available.

[GrahamSimons]

Transcriptions are always going to have errors (I'm working on a transcription project at the moment and, try as we might, and proofread as carefully as we can, errors will creep through).
In your case, however,  FreeREG are transcribing Phillimore's transcript; they are not transcribing an original register nor are they cross-checking every entry. So I think they are correct to maintain the transcript as Phillimore has it, not as the original register might be. Researchers need to be aware that transcripts (and transcripts of transcripts) will have errors and so need to be cross-checked against originals where they exist.

[jbml]

Oh ... don't get me started on pre-1752 dates!

The modern convention of showing, e.g. the date of the act of regicide as 30 January 1648/9 is clear and unambiguous.

If people want to adjust a pre-1752 date to New Style alone, and so record it as 30 January 1649 (New Style) then that too is fine because they are TELLING you that it has been adjusted.

But there are so many resources out there which have taken it upon themselves to adjust to New Style without telling you ... so you assume it is an Old Style date and mark it as such ... and you end up a year out.

The matter is complicated, of course, by the fact that prevailing usage was already shifting to New Syle in the first half of the 18th century and that the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 actually FOLLOWS prevailing usage rather than instigating it. And whilst the clergy, for the most part, doggedly followed "correct" usage until told otherwise by Act of Parliament, some of them adopted prevailing usage and I have seen parish registers from the 1720s and 30s where the year digit is clearly changed on 1 January not 25 March. So as ever, consulting the original record and checking what they were ACTUALLY doing in that parish register at that date is the only way to be sure.

[GrahamSimons]

...and the change of calendar took place at different times in different countries, e.g. 1582 in France, 1923 in Greece.....

[AmandaP]

Transcriptions are always going to have errors (I'm working on a transcription project at the moment and, try as we might, and proofread as carefully as we can, errors will creep through).
In your case, however,  FreeREG are transcribing Phillimore's transcript; they are not transcribing an original register nor are they cross-checking every entry. So I think they are correct to maintain the transcript as Phillimore has it, not as the original register might be. Researchers need to be aware that transcripts (and transcripts of transcripts) will have errors and so need to be cross-checked against originals where they exist.

Yes, your first part is my point. Transcriptions will always have mistakes, only human, which is why it is important to look at the originals when available.

In the case of Phillimores, do you not  believe that a note should be added to an online database such as freereg.org.uk when an entry in Phillimores has been proven with the original records to be wrong? At least ancestry.com allows you to submit an alternative.

[AntonyMMM]

FreeREG are transcribing Phillimore's transcript; they are not transcribing an original register nor are they cross-checking every entry. So I think they are correct to maintain the transcript as Phillimore has it

I would agree - all transcription should reproduce exactly what is written on the relevant document and not seek to correct or interpret it in any way, but they need to make it clear that this is a transcript of a transcript and not taken from original sources.

I've rarely used FreeReg but like most researchers (I suspect) I was under the impression that they are transcribing from images of the actual registers, but when you look closer they do say "and other relevant sources" ... many entries do say that they are sourced from "other transcript" and there is a warning on the search page telling users that transcripts can have errors and to check the originals.

Not accepting a note saying that Philliimore doesn't match the actual register is not very helpful, though I can understand why they may take that approach.

[melba_schmelba]

I should add that not uncommonly, people were labelled wrongly as bachelor, spinster or widow(er) on marriages or censuses, so the original can be wrong too.

[jbml]

all transcription should reproduce exactly what is written on the relevant document and not seek to correct or interpret it in any way

So they should ... but the real issue comes when "what is written" is difficult to discern.

The transcribers' mantra "write what you see" is all very well and good; but the person with additional information from other sources may have knowledge which enables them to "see" more accurately what is written there. I think correcting on the basis of such insights is right and proper.

Altering "spinster" to "widow", on the other hand, is not ... this is best dealt with by a footnote or simolar stating "although described here as a spinster, other evidence exists to suggest that she was in fact the widow of so-ond-so who died on such-and-such a date".

[AmandaP]

Altering "spinster" to "widow", on the other hand, is not ... this is best dealt with by a footnote or simolar stating "although described here as a spinster, other evidence exists to suggest that she was in fact the widow of so-ond-so who died on such-and-such a date".

I completely agree.

freereg.org.uk state on their website that “The aim of FreeREG is to provide free internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records. We are transcribing records from parish registers, non-conformist records and other relevant sources in the UK.”

They also give the option to submit a correction - great.

But when I submitted a correction based on the original marriage banns and the original parish register which neither original records of that time in Kings Stanley Glos. state either way if the bride and groom are widow/er, spinster or bachelor, the response I received was too bad, Phillimores says so. Phillimore seems to be responsible for adding spinster to his transcription, yet there is no way he had insider knowledge. I did not ask freereg.org.uk to add widow, I simply asked them to remove spinster to reflect the original records. They are not claiming to be providing a copy of Phillimores on their website, they are claiming that they are transcribing the parish registers and obtaining information from other relevant sources, so I find it completely bizarre, based on the aim of freereg.org.uk that they would argue that Phillimores trumps original records.

Accordingly, I reiterate the point of my original post: to always check the original records where available.