There are ways around transcription problems on Ancestry, eg using the Soundex system, searching by first names and places, searching the districts etc which is easier with the earlier censuses are there are less people to look through; you can sometimes search a whole village in a half hour or less, depending on the speed of your computer. If you do find a mistranscription, you can correct it. The trying out of various possibilities is part of the fun of searching for me, almost as good as trawling through pages in an archive - which sadly would be very difficult for me to get to. Georgina 10821 Georgina Colwell www.musicair.co.uk www.musictheatrebritain.co.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marion Woolgar" <listmail2008@btinternet.com> To: <cainjo1@postmaster.co.uk>; "lesleywhiting" <lesley.whiting3@btinternet.com>; "sfhg" <sfhg@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 10:25 AM Subject: Re: [SFHG] William Pestifold >I didn't actually use Ancestry to find Lesley's family on the Brighton 1851 > Census. Although it is there, it is mistranscribed as PATTISON. I think > that it would take a lot of searching and lateral thinking to overcome > that > particular mistranscription. > > Instead, I used the SFHG's own Index to the Brighton 1851 Census which I > bought years ago on fiche as each part was published (they are available > on > CD now). In this transcript and Index, the family is transcribed as > PESTIFOTE?, which is a lot closer to Lesley's spelling of the surname. > When > I checked the Census schedule itself, I can quite see why the SFHG > volunteer > had difficulty reading it as it is very cramped writing. However, they > made > a very good stab at it indeed. > > Wherein lies the moral of the tale. I often overhear people at record > offices, libraries and family history fairs saying that there is no point > in > buying census transcripts from Family History Societies (FHS) "because it > is > all online now and all you need is a subscription to a web site". My > heart > sinks when I hear that because the very best census transcripts and > indexes > will always be those that are made by interested volunteers who have a > knowledge of the district that they are working on; and even then, their > work is closely checked before publication by an FHS. I very much doubt > that the internet search sites will ever be able to match that degree of > commitment to quality control. > > Of course, no-one could ever afford to purchase all the Indexes that they > need from FHS's and coverage is necessarily patchy because the work > depends > on volunteers coming forward and there has never been enough of them. > That's where web sites like Ancestry, Findmypast etc score heavily and I > had > hoped that Familyhistoryonline would answer that challenge. However, > there > was trouble with that idea from the start with many FHS's refusing to > sign-up to the idea and/or the contract with the Federation of Family > History Societies (FFHS) and now the FFHS has sold out to Findmypast. > "Big > business" wins again. > > Best wishes > > Marion Woolgar > Bognor Regis, West Sussex > SFHG NO: 3323 > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SFHG-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > >