Church of England Parish Registers
I am reviewing baptismal records. Every indexer is assuming the child's last name is the same as the parents, even tho the instructions are explicit that it should not be assumed. Am I wrong? Batch ID M3FJ-NTV
Answers
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You are not wrong.
The example shows that no surname is indexed for the child when it is not included with the name. The field help says not to assume a surname from others on the document.
I can't open your batch, but, I have one of the batches in my queue and have indexed a few of them since they went online.
Once a batch is submitted, it cannot be viewed as a share batch. Except it does seem that some of the moderators might be able to view these.
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Thanks Melissa, It helps to have a second opinion
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While the guidelines regarding surnames for a child make sense in most cases, doesn't it miss the mark on baptism records for this project? The surnames of the parents are shown or in some instances just the surname of the mother if the child was born out-of-wedlock. Since the object of indexing is to make available to researchers information on a person it becomes difficult when only a first name is entered on a database of baptism's or deaths records. No doubt there are isolated instances where the surname of the parents is different from that of their child but the vast majority of entries would reflect the true relationship between child and parents which would include the same last name. Hampering search efforts by using only first names to identify a child would probably defeat many researchers especially if they are new to locating records and are not familiar with the guidelines.
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While it might seem to "miss the mark", all parts of this project have been the same. So, by this section's release (Part E), if that is not what the owners wanted, I think they would have made the adjustment by now. Most projects don't have us assume the surname of the child based on other surnames in the document. But, when they want us to index a surname it will show up on the example and in the field helps. (Non-conformist and the Madras Protestant Church Records, for example.) We just have to follow the instructions.
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Thank you for your reply.
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