On 11/12/14 00:31, Charles Ellson wrote: > In most cases it doesn't matter that much if the _recorded_ date is > consistent as long as the error isn't anomolous serious (e.g. buried > before they died or baptised before birth) or serious (e.g. the wrong > year when a December event has been registered in January and careless > transcription has recorded the new year). Add to that dates on the Julian calendar. Often dates that would be early in the new-style year are given as 1723/4 but sometimes as simply 1723 or 1724. You have to look at context to decide. e.g. the PR originals keep the old-style date but the modern transcription gives the dual year format. However I've seen an antiquarian transcription use a simple form for the date of a medieval will & its probate where the context for interpreting it was a number of records from royal court rolls which would have been posthumous unless one realised the will dates given were old-style. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk

Sorry but your post explains why so may family trees are inaccurate, just look at what you have written! On 09/12/2014 20:06, Jenny M Benson via wrote: > I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually > searching for is a Baptism If the records you are searching show births (as many parish registers do) why record them as baptisms and vice versa? > (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I > find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst > FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are > actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to > indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only > *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from > something else. Again you "presume", don't presume do some research and find out what the record you are looking at records. > > Which ties in with another of my gripes about FMP - they are constantly > shouting about the millions of new "records" they are releasing each > week, but in so many cases these are actual transcriptions. Call me > pedantic, but I consider an image of a PR (for example) to be a RECORD, > whereas someone's transcription of that PR entry is just that, a > TRANSCRIPTION. > > FMP don't seem to be aware or just don't care - that anyone serious > about their research wants to see RECORDS, not transcriptions. Granted, > transcriptions are better than nothing, but little better if they aren't > labelled correctly and don't include sources. Yes I agree but, in reality transcriptions are transcribed records which means the contraction of records is equally as valid as the contraction transcripts. However the real point is many of today's researchers fail to understand what they are viewing when looking at records. They fail to discover what is being recorded and just as importantly why it was recorded. Such information significantly changes ones understanding of the record itself. When one understands why and how the record was created one can understand that certain information contained on it will be as accurate as possible or may be a stab in the dark and needs to be questioned. It is only when the researcher realises that virtually all parish entries of baptisms and burials are transcripts, for example, that he or she can understand that errors can and do appear in the registers. It is not just the big companies that are to blame we the individuals taking one research must shoulder the blame as well. Cheers Guy

On Wed, 10 Dec 2014 08:17:55 -0500, Keith Nuttle <[email protected]> wrote: >On 12/10/2014 12:02 AM, Steve Hayes wrote: >> On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >>> searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >>> find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >>> FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >>> actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >>> indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only >>> *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >>> something else. >> >> I've has a similar problem with some thing's I'm copying from someone else's >> tree. She has access to the original church records and I don't. She strikes >> me as a careful researcher, so I think the information is accurate, but I >> still find it odd when she has entered the name of the church in the Birth >> field in the GEDCOM file she sent me. That could be in the Source field, yes, >> but the person was surely not born in the church. So I just leave it out. >> >> But with burials, what do I do? >> >> If it appears in the death field, there would surely be only a very few cases >> where the person died in the church, so I put it in the burial field, and if >> it has a date like 15 May 1740, I put the death date as May 1740. If the date >> is 1 May 1740, I put the death date as Abt Apr 1740. >> >> In most cases (before refrigeration) burial took place within a couple of days >> of death, though in places with harsh winters they may have stored the body in >> a shed somewhere until the ground had thawed enough to be easy to dig. >> >> >While I understand the difference between birth/christening date and >death/burial dates. You have to use what you can find. In the greater >scheme of things does it matter if a person died on the 4th or 8th of >the month? > It does if you're hoping to find matches done by computerised systems, not all of which will show "near misses" (e.g. same month, different day). >Even when you have a date for either, you are dependent on the accuracy >of the person recording the information. Was the person birth at 11:45 >pm or a half hour later at at 12:15am the next day? Was the death date >the date of biological death or was it the date the person recording the >information made the entry. Was the death date the date the Obituary >appeared in the newspaper? > In most cases it doesn't matter that much if the _recorded_ date is consistent as long as the error isn't anomolous serious (e.g. buried before they died or baptised before birth) or serious (e.g. the wrong year when a December event has been registered in January and careless transcription has recorded the new year). >I have one "date of death" that is the date the husband bought his wife >casket in 1863. I believe that it was probably that the casket was >purchased after the biological death, and probably with in a few days of >the biological death. In 14 years of research this is the closet I have >found to a date of death. > >The only thing you can do is record the dates you find and record them >as they appear in the document where they were found. As with my casket >date of death you record EVERYTHING in notes. > Where it will be accepted, it is often safe to record the year alone or the month and the year depending on how long it was reasonable to have had a body lying around. "Found dead"s can be a bit awkward if the judicial process decides an earlier date than the one on the death registration and that is not added to the death registration. >While you can lower the >priority for searching for the date of death, you should always be aware >as you search archives that there may be a better dates or better >information. You never finish your genealogy research.

On 10 Dec at 20:48, Tickettyboo <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2014-12-10 19:06:56 +0000, Tim Powys-Lybbe said: > > > Sounds like the first line of FMP's customer service is doing a very > > poor job. > > To be fair, the first line CS takes all the flak without being in a > position to do anything other than report up the line. That may be with some firms but how about this report on this group made on 5th Dec: > > I phoned Findmypast twice this morning to report this major issue. > > They are not interested. They say that as the records were provided > > to them by FamilySearch, I have to contact FamilySearch myself to > > request them to contact Findmypast to discuss the error. Findmypast > > are unwilling to contact FamilySearch themselves. I find that > > astonishing. On the spot checks that I have conducted the forenames > > are there on the FamilySearch side but not on the Findmypast side. This was followed later that day, after criticism here, with: > > Findmypast have tweeted "We've fixed the issue causing first names > > not to display and you'll see them appear over the next few hours." What I am hpping is that FMP's tweeting person will report a similar resolution to the Newspaper legibility problem. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

On 2014-12-10 19:06:56 +0000, Tim Powys-Lybbe said: > Sounds like the first > line of FMP's customer service is doing a very poor job. To be fair, the first line CS takes all the flak without being in a position to do anything other than report up the line. -- Tickettyboo

On 9 Dec at 18:44, "Tony Proctor" <[email protected]_NoMore_SPAM.net> wrote: > > "Iain Archer" <[email protected]> wrote in message > news:[email protected] > > MB <[email protected]> wrote on Sun, 7 Dec 2014 at 15:39:40: > > > On 07/12/2014 11:42, Anne Sherman wrote: > > > > Like others I generally only use this site for the newspapers > > > > now. > >> > >> > > > I have a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive for that as > > > well as online library access to Scotsman, Grauniad, Times, 19th > > > Century and 17/18th Century newspapers so never used the more > > > limited FMP access. > > > > I've just been downloading some newpaper pages via the FMP site. > > Despite my efforts I seem only to get downloaded PDF files of > > 400-500 kB, which isn't large enough when I then open and zoom in on > > them for reading. That's despite the fact that when viewing them > > on-site I can zoom in on them greatly without seeing any damaging > > degradation of image. > > > > That differs from my experience using the British Newspaper > > Archive's own website where, afair, if I was viewing a > > well-magnified full page, I could download it as a file of maybe 2 > > or 3 MB and have no difficulty reading from it. I'm not sure > > whether this is due to an intrinsic difference betwen the two sites > > or to something happening at my end. However, uninstalling the > > NoScript Firefox addon -- the only recent software I remember > > installing -- hasn't made any difference. Any suggestions or > > different experience? -- Iain Archer > > I tend to get downloaded pages of 800-900kB Ian, which probably just > depends on the paper, but nothing approaching 2-3MB. I believe this is > some arbitrary limitation imposed by FMP. I admit that it's > frustrating. > > They probably imagine that the resolution is perfectly readable, and > so they don't need to send larger files. My justification for this is > that I've previously asked that they support higher magnification on > their census images, etc. Rather than understanding that this was to > analyse pen-strokes and other image anomalies -- as any genealogist > would -- it was implied that the current maximum is perfectly good for > normal eyesight. > > Sigh... This is not a new problem. When the Newspaper Archive was first made available, the downloads either did not work or were of low definition. I reported on this several times but nothing happened. Like most I was able to enlarge browsed images and get a satisfactory definition, but not of the whole article or whatever at once. I therefore developed some skill at stitching these snippets together. The whole performance was hopeless, particularly compared to the good results obtained from The Times Digital Archive. So I gave up on The "New" Newspaper Archive and wondered if it would ever get any better. It sounds as if FindMyPast has Found a Past version of the software and the files and not the version that is now reported to be on the Archive's own website. Perhaps there has been too much of skinflinting at FMP and not enough of sensible user experience. I wonder, with these poor reports, whether someone will do as happened last week and wake up and sort the thing out? Sounds like the first line of FMP's customer service is doing a very poor job. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

On 09/12/2014 23:07, Anne Chambers wrote: > David Marshall wrote: >> On 08/12/2014 11:17, Anne Chambers wrote: >>> David Marshall wrote: >>>> On 08/12/2014 10:49, Anne Chambers wrote: > >>>> >>> Have you found the bride in a previous census in England ? >> In the 1891 census her birthplace is just stated to be Ireland and I >> have not found her in 1881. In 1882 his >> battalion was in Ireland so maybe he met her there. >> >> David >> > When was their first child born ? Pwehaps she came over from Ireland > because she was pregnant and needed to get married fast. > As far as I can tell they had no children, my son-in-law is descended from his second marriage. Of course that does not rule out the possibility of a stillbirth or an infant who died before the next census. There are no obvious candidates in FreeBMD, but the name is too common to be certain as the wife's maiden name is not included in the index at this period. As I mentioned, his marriage is correctly recorded in his service record which would suggest that he had official approval. David

David Marshall wrote: > On 08/12/2014 11:17, Anne Chambers wrote: >> David Marshall wrote: >>> On 08/12/2014 10:49, Anne Chambers wrote: >>> >> Have you found the bride in a previous census in England ? > In the 1891 census her birthplace is just stated to be Ireland and I have not found her in 1881. In 1882 his > battalion was in Ireland so maybe he met her there. > > David > When was their first child born ? Pwehaps she came over from Ireland because she was pregnant and needed to get married fast. -- Anne Chambers South Australia anne dot chambers at bigpond dot com

On 12/10/2014 12:02 AM, Steve Hayes wrote: > On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >> searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >> find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >> FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >> actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >> indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only >> *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >> something else. > > I've has a similar problem with some thing's I'm copying from someone else's > tree. She has access to the original church records and I don't. She strikes > me as a careful researcher, so I think the information is accurate, but I > still find it odd when she has entered the name of the church in the Birth > field in the GEDCOM file she sent me. That could be in the Source field, yes, > but the person was surely not born in the church. So I just leave it out. > > But with burials, what do I do? > > If it appears in the death field, there would surely be only a very few cases > where the person died in the church, so I put it in the burial field, and if > it has a date like 15 May 1740, I put the death date as May 1740. If the date > is 1 May 1740, I put the death date as Abt Apr 1740. > > In most cases (before refrigeration) burial took place within a couple of days > of death, though in places with harsh winters they may have stored the body in > a shed somewhere until the ground had thawed enough to be easy to dig. > > While I understand the difference between birth/christening date and death/burial dates. You have to use what you can find. In the greater scheme of things does it matter if a person died on the 4th or 8th of the month? Even when you have a date for either, you are dependent on the accuracy of the person recording the information. Was the person birth at 11:45 pm or a half hour later at at 12:15am the next day? Was the death date the date of biological death or was it the date the person recording the information made the entry. Was the death date the date the Obituary appeared in the newspaper? I have one "date of death" that is the date the husband bought his wife casket in 1863. I believe that it was probably that the casket was purchased after the biological death, and probably with in a few days of the biological death. In 14 years of research this is the closet I have found to a date of death. The only thing you can do is record the dates you find and record them as they appear in the document where they were found. As with my casket date of death you record EVERYTHING in notes. While you can lower the priority for searching for the date of death, you should always be aware as you search archives that there may be a better dates or better information. You never finish your genealogy research.

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> wrote: >I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only >*presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >something else. I've has a similar problem with some thing's I'm copying from someone else's tree. She has access to the original church records and I don't. She strikes me as a careful researcher, so I think the information is accurate, but I still find it odd when she has entered the name of the church in the Birth field in the GEDCOM file she sent me. That could be in the Source field, yes, but the person was surely not born in the church. So I just leave it out. But with burials, what do I do? If it appears in the death field, there would surely be only a very few cases where the person died in the church, so I put it in the burial field, and if it has a date like 15 May 1740, I put the death date as May 1740. If the date is 1 May 1740, I put the death date as Abt Apr 1740. In most cases (before refrigeration) burial took place within a couple of days of death, though in places with harsh winters they may have stored the body in a shed somewhere until the ground had thawed enough to be easy to dig. -- Steve Hayes Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/ http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

On Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:06:39 +0000, Jenny M Benson <[email protected]> wrote: >I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually >searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I >find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst >FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are >actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to >indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. > The more recent they are, the less safe is that presumption as registers started to record both death and burial dates. If it is earlier than say mid-19th century then they probably are burial dates but you would need e.g. MI or probate records to compare with more recent records in the absence of a specific statement of which they are. >Again, I can only >*presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from >something else. > >Which ties in with another of my gripes about FMP - they are constantly >shouting about the millions of new "records" they are releasing each >week, but in so many cases these are actual transcriptions. Call me >pedantic, but I consider an image of a PR (for example) to be a RECORD, >whereas someone's transcription of that PR entry is just that, a >TRANSCRIPTION. > >FMP don't seem to be aware or just don't care - that anyone serious >about their research wants to see RECORDS, not transcriptions. Granted, >transcriptions are better than nothing, but little better if they aren't >labelled correctly and don't include sources.

I am quite used to having to enter a "Birthdate" when what I am actually searching for is a Baptism (yes, Ancestry, I'm looking at you) and now I find the "Date of Death" of many of my relatives is recorded amongst FMP's Hampshire Burials records. I *presume* the dates shown are actually of Burials but there is nothing in these transcriptions to indicate of what, exactly, these are transcriptions. Again, I can only *presume* they are of PRs or BTs (but which?) but maybe they are from something else. Which ties in with another of my gripes about FMP - they are constantly shouting about the millions of new "records" they are releasing each week, but in so many cases these are actual transcriptions. Call me pedantic, but I consider an image of a PR (for example) to be a RECORD, whereas someone's transcription of that PR entry is just that, a TRANSCRIPTION. FMP don't seem to be aware or just don't care - that anyone serious about their research wants to see RECORDS, not transcriptions. Granted, transcriptions are better than nothing, but little better if they aren't labelled correctly and don't include sources. -- Jenny M Benson

I don't think so. If our ancestors were looking to the future to research "us" yes but our descendants researching us no, unless things take a few steps backwards in the future. Good luck on Tuesday Gordon "Geoff Pearson" wrote in message news:[email protected] My partner and I are converting our 2005 civil partnership into a marriage next Tuesday - it is an administrative procedure. It means our partnership will be in the same registers as current "straight" marriages - how much confusion will that cause?

On 2014-12-09 15:08:18 +0000, Geoff Pearson said: > My partner and I are converting our 2005 civil partnership into a > marriage next Tuesday - it is an administrative procedure. It means > our partnership will be in the same registers as current "straight" > marriages - how much confusion will that cause? I assume you mean when people in the distant future are researching those of us who are around today? Ever optimistic, I am hoping that in 100 years time they won't bat an eyelid, they'll just record it as a same sex marriage and start looking to find out more info - parents, siblings, where you lived, what occupations you followed etc etc etc. Congrats to you both, enjoy the day, it must mean 'much' more than an administrative procedure to you or you probably wouldn't be doing it. -- Tickettyboo

"Iain Archer" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected] > MB <[email protected]> wrote on Sun, 7 Dec 2014 at 15:39:40: >>On 07/12/2014 11:42, Anne Sherman wrote: >>> Like others I generally only use this site for the newspapers now. >> >> >>I have a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive for that as well as >>online library access to Scotsman, Grauniad, Times, 19th Century and >>17/18th Century newspapers so never used the more limited FMP access. > > I've just been downloading some newpaper pages via the FMP site. Despite > my efforts I seem only to get downloaded PDF files of 400-500 kB, which > isn't large enough when I then open and zoom in on them for reading. > That's despite the fact that when viewing them on-site I can zoom in on > them greatly without seeing any damaging degradation of image. > > That differs from my experience using the British Newspaper Archive's own > website where, afair, if I was viewing a well-magnified full page, I could > download it as a file of maybe 2 or 3 MB and have no difficulty reading > from it. I'm not sure whether this is due to an intrinsic difference > betwen the two sites or to something happening at my end. However, > uninstalling the NoScript Firefox addon -- the only recent software I > remember installing -- hasn't made any difference. Any suggestions or > different experience? > -- > Iain Archer I tend to get downloaded pages of 800-900kB Ian, which probably just depends on the paper, but nothing approaching 2-3MB. I believe this is some arbitrary limitation imposed by FMP. I admit that it's frustrating. They probably imagine that the resolution is perfectly readable, and so they don't need to send larger files. My justification for this is that I've previously asked that they support higher magnification on their census images, etc. Rather than understanding that this was to analyse pen-strokes and other image anomalies -- as any genealogist would -- it was implied that the current maximum is perfectly good for normal eyesight. Sigh... Tony Proctor

> >> July 1885. I have not yet found out why the wedding was in Clewer. Clewer is on the doorstep of Windsor Barracks, and a lot of military marriages took place there. Possibly he was asked 'what's your job/ occupation? Being in the Army isn't exactly a 'job' in the usual sense. It sounds as uif the lady chased him from Ireland and perhaps needed to get married fast. There is the consideration that soldiers needed permission to marry (if they wanted their wives to be 'on the strength' so maybe he didn't wish to wait or to alert the Army to a marriage without prior permission. EVE Author of The McLaughlin Guides for Family Historians Secretary, Bucks Genealogical Society

MB <[email protected]> wrote on Sun, 7 Dec 2014 at 15:39:40: >On 07/12/2014 11:42, Anne Sherman wrote: >> Like others I generally only use this site for the newspapers now. > > >I have a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive for that as well >as online library access to Scotsman, Grauniad, Times, 19th Century and >17/18th Century newspapers so never used the more limited FMP access. I've just been downloading some newpaper pages via the FMP site. Despite my efforts I seem only to get downloaded PDF files of 400-500 kB, which isn't large enough when I then open and zoom in on them for reading. That's despite the fact that when viewing them on-site I can zoom in on them greatly without seeing any damaging degradation of image. That differs from my experience using the British Newspaper Archive's own website where, afair, if I was viewing a well-magnified full page, I could download it as a file of maybe 2 or 3 MB and have no difficulty reading from it. I'm not sure whether this is due to an intrinsic difference betwen the two sites or to something happening at my end. However, uninstalling the NoScript Firefox addon -- the only recent software I remember installing -- hasn't made any difference. Any suggestions or different experience? -- Iain Archer

On 09/12/2014 15:08, Geoff Pearson wrote: > My partner and I are converting our 2005 civil partnership into a > marriage next Tuesday - it is an administrative procedure. It means our > partnership will be in the same registers as current "straight" > marriages - how much confusion will that cause? Congratulations! Not as much confusion as the adoption of children by gay couples is going to cause in the future. It's an area where terminology has yet to catch up. -- Graeme Wall This account not read, substitute trains for rail. Railway Miscellany at <http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail>

My partner and I are converting our 2005 civil partnership into a marriage next Tuesday - it is an administrative procedure. It means our partnership will be in the same registers as current "straight" marriages - how much confusion will that cause?

David Marshall wrote: > On 08/12/2014 10:49, Anne Chambers wrote: >> David Marshall wrote: >> >>> >>> My thanks to all who made suggestions. I am a little surprised that >>> "lacemaker" would have been considered >>> more prestigious than "Corporal in the Grenadier Guards" but maybe he >>> just considered his military service a >>> temporary episode in his life - he bought himself out and returned to >>> lacemaking a couple of years later. >>> >>> David >>> >> A temporary aberration perhaps ? How long was he in the Army; had there >> been any Army recruiting operations in the vicinity when he joined up ? >> Did he sign up for xxx years and then have to wait until he could leave? >> > He enlisted in his home town of Nottingham in January 1877 for 12 years and purchased his release for £9 in > July 1885. I have not yet found out why the wedding was in Clewer. > > David > Have you found the bride in a previous census in England ? -- Anne Chambers South Australia anne dot chambers at bigpond dot com