Records being indexed to the wrong town of Schönwalde
Hello,
I have come across many records that have been indexed to the town of Schönwalde, Flatow, Marienwerder, West Prussia (today Szynwald by Torun) that should be indexed to Schönwalde, Kreis Neustadt, West Prussia (today Szemud by Wejherowo). They are two hours apart by car. Maybe it needs to be added to the system:
Schönwalde, Kreis Neustadt, West Prussia (today Szemud by Wejherowo)
Best Answer
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The Lusin-versus-Rheda error is classic FS multi-part film confusion: film 1619039 has records from three different places on it, with the first part being Lusin, so that's what all of the index entries are labeled with, regardless of which part of the film they actually came from. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of such mislabeled records in FS's database, and I have never heard of such an error ever being corrected.
The Schönwalde error, on the other hand, is ...odd. Assuming that the image association is correct (I can't check, they're restricted), the film is clearly cataloged as "Roman Catholic parish register of baptisms, marriages and deaths for Kölln (Kr. Neustadt), West Prussia, Germany; now Kielno (Wejherowo), Gdańsk, Poland. Includes Schönwalde, now Szemud" -- which means that most of those event places should correctly be Kölln/Kielno, not any sort of Schönwalde, and yet I looked through about 500 of them, and every single one had the Schönwalde in Flatow as the baptism place. It's not a multi-part film, and the same-name-different-place is typical of the other widespread place error type, which is caused by a recent automated standard-associating routine, but there's only one place field, and the automated routine puts its choice in a new field, rather than replacing the old one.
Looking at the other films on Kielno's catalog page (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/102762), there's another odd error: for one of the multi-part films (742703), the index took the place from item 6 (Mechau) rather than item 1 (Gorrenschin).
I don't know how to communicate these widespread metadata errors to someone at FamilySearch who can actually do something about them. I'm not sure there is such a person.
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Answers
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Can you give a link to an example of an index record with this incorrect place? It may give some information about what type of error it is, and therefore, how (or if) it can be corrected.
FamilySearch's Places database already has "Schönwalde, Neustadt, West Prussia, Prussia, Germany" as a standardized place, with the map pin in Szemud. (Ideally, it would be an earlier time period for the same place, but the database was initially populated from various official maps or gazetteers from different countries, and getting those elements properly associated with each other is difficult and of low priority, since things work OK even if they're separate.)
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Hello,
Here is a link to a baptism. But, it appears on all other sorts of church records.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6ZML-MBC8?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=GQ53-91C
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P.S.
I am also finding records indexed as being in Lusin (Luzino) when I know that I have personally obtained an image years ago from the church book in Rheda (Reda). And, these names are not similar, as with the two Schönwalde.
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Dear Julia Szent-Györgyi,
Thank you for your time and detailed explanation. I can see that it is not as simple of a problem as I was imagining. I see that you have a Hungarian name. My grandmother was a Hungarian from Vojvodina, and I've visited Budapest where I have a relative whom I'm friends with. Like my grandmother, he speaks German, too. It's an interesting place.
Have a nice day
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