Another incorrect retirement of a (not) duplicate record
I just found this one by chance (it's my 3G GM) and felt I ought to add it to the list of incorrect retirements of Historical Records in case it helps persuade "the management" that there really are issues.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NFTN-BWY has a legend at the top saying "This record was a duplicate and has been retired. We recommend using the most current copy". The "View Current Record" link takes me to https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NYDG-MZR
Both are text-only records in the collection England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975.
The essential problem is that the two are not duplicates. One has a Birth Date and the other doesn't. You will probably guess that it's the one with the Birth Date that has been retired, and the one without is the "most current copy".
Please unretire the one with the Birth Date.
In future, please do not retire records where the data content is different.
OK, if you want to get really clever and/or complicated, then text-only record A can be retired in favour of record B, if and only if, all of the data on Record A is on Record B. But that's getting a bit complicated.
Answers
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Now, if you can bear a dose of reality, I shall endeavour to discuss (but not explain!) the real-world entries behind the above. You don't need to read, still less understand this bit, to act on the unretirement.
Firstly I went to Ancestry to access their Bristol, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 collection and check what the story was about the Birth Date and whether it was on multiple originals. In fact, Ancestry has three images (not two!) for my 3G GM's baptism. All three images are of different original sources, all three claiming to be Parish Registers (i.e. not Bishops' Transcripts, which are duplicates by design). All three contain the birth date.
Ancestry has (give them credit) included the Bristol Record Office references for the three - they are all different.
- P.St_M/R/1/f Christenings, marriages and burials 1799-1812
- P.St_M/R/1/g Christenings and burials 1799-1813
- P.St_M/R/1/h Christenings, marriages and burials 1806-1812
Frankly, I have no idea which of those (if any) is the original, nor would I expect anyone to be able to do so, unless they were sat in Bristol with the 3 volumes open in front of them. Bristol RO have marked the first two of those references as "Transcript" in their catalogue, as if the /h is the "original". But I'm not sure that's the whole story - while the dates of the /h volume fit in with further PRs for the same parish, implying that's the "proper" copy, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of /f and /g is a rough draft from which /h was later compiled - the /h version is suspiciously neat!
So it may be that when FS compiled its entries for the collection England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975, it did so using all three of the /f, /g and /h volumes. Which would mean that there's a third version of my ancestor's baptism somewhere! (But note that one compilation included the birth date and another didn't).
I write this comment out (a) in case anyone wondered (b) to show how complex stuff can be and (c) to emphasise that I don't expect anyone to always understand reality.
@N Tychonievich - getting back to the original post here, can you or whoever, please arrange the unretirement and feed back to the "management" on the retirement process? Thanks
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@Adrian Bruce1 Thank you for the detailed explanation. Since you are wanting to convince FamilySearch's decision makers to back off a decision, the best place for you to post is in the Suggest an Idea section of Community. We don't have a mechanism in place for requesting that a specific retired record be unretired. Sorry.
You are certainly not the only one who feels that the project was not a good idea, so use Suggest an Idea and see where it goes.
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Adrian,
From the film number/DGS listed on both the retired and unretired versions, they both appear to be indexed/extracted from the same Bishop's Transcript, even in the same indexing batch.
If it would be useful to you, I'll be at my FSC one day this week, and I would be glad to retrieve the pages and covers or other relevant identifying images.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile - oh well done for finding that. I'd concluded that there was no record of which film / batch / whatever the data had come from. I'd forgotten that the arrow by the side of Document Information reveals exactly that information! Good job you hadn't...
In fact, after posting the above, I then found the Bishop's Transcript (BT) on Ancestry but didn't update the thread to reveal that Ancestry had a 4th because there's only so much reality anyone can bear, I think.
As for your kind offer, my finding that BT on Ancestry means that I can see what I need to, at my leisure, thanks, so you don't need to do anything for me. The Ancestry stuff does include the covers and front pages of the registers.
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@N Tychonievich - thanks for the suggestion, which I'll take up, cross referring anyone who wants gory details to this thread.
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Wishing you luck with your Suggestion. I've seen a few myself where the retired record had more info than the unretired version.
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