Frostfreedet@aol.com wrote: >We are by no means the only ones who make mistakes or write-while-tired. >Best wishes, >Judy ____________ Unraveling these inadvertencies can sometimes be enormous trouble. From experience, more examples: One Somerset will in my own direct ancestry mistakenly misnames a daughter Mary (my ancestress) as "Elizabeth", a lapse evidently mis-entering the name of the widow for the intended daughter. Bringing to bear several related land records and administration papers finally made the discrepancy clear. This had baffled and misled family researchers for many years. As I mentioned, land records suffer from this a lot -- clerks all too often entered "west" for "east" or such, or mis-read "seventy" for "twenty" (a very common form of mis-read). These entered the patent definitions and were sometimes used by (re)surveyors many years later, sometimes appended with a bewildered annotation along the lines of "that's what it says". With modern tools in hand, these things can now often be ferreted out: even in ambiguous (as opposed to simpler) cases, mapping software allows reconstruction of neighborhoods, and abutting properties which don't fit as they should can expose the error. A little experimentation shows what went wrong and allows the clerical mistake to be fixed in the bad record ... 300+ years later. Trust no one. John

It is especially disconcerting when a date is mis-written - and these can occur not only by the transcribers but even the original writers. Note the following example: ========1========== SoLR-IK:19 of the Somerset County, Maryland Land Records reads, "Capt. Wm Whittington planter, Somerset County agst Adam Hitch of Stepney Parish in ye county of Somerset planter and Anne his Adam Hitch et uxor wife late Anne Bondick Alias Dictus. Anne Bondick of Stepney Parish in ye county aft sumonsed to appear unto Wm Whittington of a plea that they render unto him 3412 pounds of tobacco and _____ from him they unjustly detained. Any where upon Francis Allen his attorney saith that whereas ye ___ Anne for thee was sole to witt ye 8 day of Oct 1617 (sic) at ye Parish and county of within jurisdiction of this court by her certain willing obligatory which ye set in with ye seale of the said Anne signed here into Court brings ye date where of ye same day & year did acknowledge ye herselfe to be bound unto ye Wm 3412 pounds of tobacco ___ to be paid unto ye said Wm when he should be there unto required yet ye Anne whilst ____ that often required the same for ye Wm hath not rendered nor ye Adam & Anne since ye (nuptuals?) between them celebrated but ye same to render hath denyed & ___ doth deny to ye damage of the said Wm of 2000 pounds of tobacco where of he bring ____" (underlined areas are hard to decipher) The trial for this record occurred on Nov 3 1719. EDIT: note the reference to the year 1617 when it probably should have been 1717 or 1719 (too much hard cider?) ========1========== Best Regards, Mike Hitch "so often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key..." - Eagles (Already Gone) -----Original Message----- From: lower-delmarva-roots-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:lower-delmarva-roots-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Johnlyon0@cs.com Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 3:24 AM To: lower-delmarva-roots@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [LDR] Old abbreviations and their [lack of] meanings Frostfreedet@aol.com wrote: >We are by no means the only ones who make mistakes or write-while-tired. >Best wishes, >Judy ____________ Unraveling these inadvertencies can sometimes be enormous trouble. From experience, more examples: One Somerset will in my own direct ancestry mistakenly misnames a daughter Mary (my ancestress) as "Elizabeth", a lapse evidently mis-entering the name of the widow for the intended daughter. Bringing to bear several related land records and administration papers finally made the discrepancy clear. This had baffled and misled family researchers for many years. As I mentioned, land records suffer from this a lot -- clerks all too often entered "west" for "east" or such, or mis-read "seventy" for "twenty" (a very common form of mis-read). These entered the patent definitions and were sometimes used by (re)surveyors many years later, sometimes appended with a bewildered annotation along the lines of "that's what it says". With modern tools in hand, these things can now often be ferreted out: even in ambiguous (as opposed to simpler) cases, mapping software allows reconstruction of neighborhoods, and abutting properties which don't fit as they should can expose the error. A little experimentation shows what went wrong and allows the clerical mistake to be fixed in the bad record ... 300+ years later. Trust no one. John *************************************** QUESTIONS about POSTING GUIDELINES, SUBSCRIBING or UNSUBSCRIBING? Visit The Lower DelMarVa Roots Mailing List FAQ: http://www.tyaskin.com/handley/ldrfaq.htm ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LOWER-DELMARVA-ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message