Hi Lisa, I said many years ago that I believed that anyone doing transcriptions of Census Records (or any other records, for that matter) at Ancestry should be familiar with the area for which they were doing transcriptions, know, generally, the historical surnames of that area, and have enough intelligence to do the job. Evidently, those suggestions have never been followed by Ancestry. What really galls me is that transcribers will enter surnames for one family correctly, then, for the very next family with the same surname, enter an entirely different spelling! Go figure! Don't get me started on Ancestry. They have an agenda, and it's not all about "sealing" everyone. It's also about profits/income. Sarge At 9/30/2011 08:47 AM Friday, Lisa deGruyter wrote: *********START OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE TEXT********* >"someone mentioned that she had heard that Ancestry had earlier "farmed >out" the transcriptions of Census Records to INDIA! I don't doubt it for >a moment! Looking at the glaring errors in transcriptions, I don't >believe that an American could have made such mistakes." > >I believe it - the errors in the LDS transcriptions are rampant. Having >done a little volunteer transcribing for LDS, I think that errors are >inevitable unless the transcriber is familiar with all the names in the >area being transcribed, and even then likely if you try to get up any >speed. The LVA index entries for the patents and grants regularly have >obvious transcription errors, some of which don't even require knowledge >of the area to spot, they're just sloppy like and 'a' for an obvious >'o'; I don't know who did them, but suspect it was not outsourced overseas. > >BTW, Craig, I'm a William Ball descendant, too - twice, through two sons >of Edward II and Sarah Owen, whose joint descendant married a South >Branch German in central West Virginia. > >Lisa >==== >Lisa deGruyter >Clarksburg, West Virginia >http://ldeg.wordpress.com > > > >******** >Hear Bill Barker from Colonial Williamsburg speak on Thomas Jefferson and slavery at Graves Mountain Lodge, Madison County, Virginia October 1, 2011. For information contact: www.germannacolonies.org > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GERMANS-VA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message **********END OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE TEXT*********** Germanna Database at Ancestry: http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/28427876/recent?o_iid=41125&o_lid=41125&o_sch=Web+Property My Germanna Database at Rootsweb: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=germanna My Germanna Website at Rootsweb: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~george/index.html