Searching NZ Electoral Rolls, 1865-1957 - Location Error

FemmesoleNZ

I live in New Zealand. There appears to be an error in transcription for these Rolls. See attached. NZ comprises 3 main islands - North Island, South Island and Stewart Island. None of them is in Myanmar. Please correct this.

genthusiast

I tried a similar search:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.anyPlace=New%20zealand&q.givenName=Samuel&q.surname=Sands&f.collectionId=3662227

The results appear to be corrected - do you see the same?

JulianBrown38

This seems like a widespread problem. If you browse that collection, and search with just a Last Name of 'Sands' and a Residence Place of 'Myanmar' as criteria, you will get about 87 results. If you specify a Last Name of 'Smith', you get about 6000 results, all allegedly in Myanmar. These results cover a variety of North Island (New Zealand) electorates and years. If you look at the detailed display of the results, you will see that both the Event Place and Event Place (Original) include 'North Island, Myanmar'.

You can do a similar thing by specifying a Residence Place of "Marshall Islands" and get a lot of spurious results.

Alternatively, if you look for "William Greer Sands" (exact name match) with no Residence Place specified, you'll find 8 results. 4 are for Timaru (i.e. NZ), 1 is for Palmerston (i.e. NZ), 1 is for South Island, New Zealand, but 2 are for South Island, Marshall Islands.