From: roy.stockdill@btinternet.com > But remember also that transcribers are told to transcribe exactly > what they SEE and not what someone thinks it ought to be! Remember the maxim that "an > enumerator's error is not an error" and you should never try to correct what is clearly an > enumerator's error based on some other information you may possess. All you can do is add a note > of annotation, which I believe Ancestry permits but FMP doesn't (rightly, in my view, > because such annotations made public can often lead to confusion, since how can we know that > the person who made the annotation is correct?). I have a classic example of an enumerator's error in the 1851 census entry for my 3x-great-grandparents WILLIAM and MARGARET MOODY (nee Grainge or Grange) in Spinkwell Terrace, Bradford. This clearly shows William born at Darley and Margaret at Otley. I know from extensive research in the parish registers of Hampsthwaite (in which Darley lies) and Otley that it was the other way round, but the enumerator has managed to transpose them! There is nowt I can do about it except annotate the fact in my own notes. I am sure everyone will have similar cases. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE

Here are a few more tips to add to the ones I posted earlier. 1) ALWAYS check to see whether there are what Findmypast calls "Known issues" in the censuses. For instance, there are missing pages, missing piece numbers and other known problems. I was recently looking for people I thought ought to be in the parish of Malpas, Cheshire, in the 1841, but then I looked at the Help page and discovered substantial parts of the parish were missing. In Yorkshire in 1841 parts of the parish of Ripon are missing. The damaged (and many recovered) pages in the Manchester area in the 1851 are well known but in Yorkshire in 1851 pages in the parish of Darton were damaged by flooding. Pauline Littons say in her excellent book "Pitfalls and Possibilities in Family History Research" that in 1861 16 piece numbers have not survived and sections of another 81 are missing. In Yorkshire, parts of Leeds and Halifax are missing, also parts of Guisborough. If you are unlucky enough to have had an ancestor in the missing bits, well - TOUGH! 2) Are there alternative records that can be checked? A good source, especially if your ancestor was from a gentry, ecclesiastical or land-owning family or a tradesman, is to look at directories around the time of the census (though of course they won't normally name other members of the family). 3) Many men are absent from the 1901 census because they were fighting in the Second Boer War in South Africa. My wife's grandfather, William John Troth, was among them. 4) Forenames can be as much of a problem as surnames! Sometimes nicknames or pet names were used, especially for children, and forenames often got reversed. For instance, my wife's grandfather (as above) was born at Straford-on-Avon in 1878 as William John Troth and appears as such in the 1911 census in that name in Coventry. But his marriage appears on FreeBMD in Coventry in 1910 as John W Troth and his daughter, my wife's mother, now aged 101 who appears in 1911 as being 2 months old, swears he was always known to everyone as "John Willie". So if you can't find someone with an advanced search, try reversing the forenames and/or initials. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE