Mis-transcriptions are quite wide spread..especially from the earlier censuses. Little importance was place on spelling accuracy during those days...plus writing styles differed widely among the early census-takers. The early census-takers spelled the names given them as they heard them...not necessarily as the name is correctly spelled. Difficulty in deciphering early handwriting even compounds the issue. So bottom line...the quality of transcription of early census records is determined basically by three things: the accuracy of pronunciation of the person who gave the original information to census taker, the spelling skills of the census taker and then finally the legibility of the handwriting of the census taker. A lot of times, if you can't find a name using the right spelling, spell the word the way it sounds and search for it. I.E., if you can't find Howard...look for Howord or Howurd. It's worked for me a lot of times. David Duncan -----Original Message----- From: tnweakle-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:tnweakle-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Richard Saunders Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 8:35 AM To: tnweakle@rootsweb.com Subject: [TNWEAKLE] Census transcriptions I had a man in from Michigan doing research on the IVIE family from Gardiner. He had been frustrated because they could not be located in Ancestry. After checking the film we discovered the name had been mistranscribed as EVIE. That got me thinking--transcription is a subjective art, but generally pretty accurate. Has anyone else had problems with mistranscriptions in the census indices? I wonder how wide-spread the issue is. ***** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ***** Richard Saunders, Curator Special Collections/Univ. Archives 731-881-7094 Univ. of Tennessee at Martin fax 731-881-7074 Martin, Tenn. 38238 saunders@utm.edu ***** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ***** ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TNWEAKLE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message