Napoleon Bonaparte 93XK-7HT-Where are these FS records coming from?
He has 133 sources attached to his profile and some of them seem to have obvious errors or perhaps were indexed incorrectly?
For example:
He was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica but there is a record attached titled "England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950" stating he was christened in Northumberland, England.
He died in 1821 on the island of St. Helena-a British territory located the south Atlantic Ocean. He has a record attached titled "Pennsylvania Deaths and Burials, 1720-1999" that says he died in Philadelphia, PA?
He was originally buried on St. Helena but in 1840 his remains were transferred to France and buried in Paris. He has a record attached titled ""England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950" that state he was buried in Northumberland, England? There is another record "Pennsylvania, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Deaths and Burials, 1856-1971" that states he was buried in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
And can I just say how annoying the records from the newspapers, GenealogyBank, etc are?
Answers
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Hi @LFarrier Welcome to FamilySearch community and posting your questions about sources. FamilySearch/FamilyTree is a public tree with the users being the contributors. In the case of the record for Napoleon Bonaparte, there have been hundreds of contributors. There have been numerous merges to this record. I suspect you probably are familiar with the latest changes which logs all the changes made to the record. When you go to show all you can filter on specifics items (for example, sources) and see all the contributors. Having said that, it is up to the users to make the records as accurate as possible. Where you see incorrect sources, you can detach them and provide an explanation. You can also correct anything else wrong with the record when supported by sources. Thanks for your contributions.
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It is not possible for individual users to deal with the volume of continuing sabotage of FamilySearch's files.
One of the "garbage" sources attached to 93XK-7HT is https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPCZ-QHXS, which is a baptism in the collection England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950. That record has Digital Folder Number 004629016 and Image 00110. (That is a real DFN, by the way).
I would like to request someone checks the original image to try and gain some insight what has happened - the source is "not" incorrectly attached because the source is for the right person on the right date. Instead, I fear that the original source record has been sabotaged by editing data values.
Have a look at some similar source records (DGS 4629016 I think) :
This does look like sabotage of source records to me - i.e. the situation is deeper than just corruption of individuals' profiles.
The questions are:
- Am I wrong and there is a family of Pashas in Northumberland?
- How has that sabotage been done?
- If the source records don't match the images, are they completely new source records or have existing source records been corrupted?
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Hmmm - that DGS is not available even at an FSC or I would put it on my list for today's trip. [Edit to add - showing as available only at SLC.]
Being ever hopeful - maybe a post-processing error rather than deliberate sabotage?
@Stephanie V. FYI
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I can confirm that 4629016 is the correct DGS. I just repeated my search to use menu SEARCH / RECORDS with option to specify DGS. Those are the top 6 on the list - the next items after, look normal. (Does the positioning in the results give any clue or is it just a chance arrangement?)
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Hmm. Let me fly a kite that might indicate not sabotage but seriously poor "indexing".
DGS 4629016 includes an item
- Obituary kept from the beginning of the 19th century to 1870
- Author: Forster, Matthew; Forster, Jonathan Langstaff
The catalogue (that boring thing that's never been updated in the last X years 😉 ) says
Microreproduction of 1915 typescript housed at the Northumberland Record Office, Gosforth.
These records were begun by Matthew Forster, a solicitor from Newcastle upon Tyne, and kept by him until 1860, at which time his son, Jonathan Langstaff Forster, assumed the task. They include pedigrees and genealogies of the Forster family, and extensive records, including birth and death dates and relationships of many individuals and families throughout Northumberland and Great Britain.
So - when I checked the British Newspaper Archive on FindMyPast, there are several newspaper entries that correspond to the weird stuff above.
Prince Paskiewitsch's death is reported in various UK newspapers in February 1856.
Tefik Pasha and Selim Pasha (I presume Pasha is an honorific) are reported dead in Spring 1855 - I was looking at a composite article for that, so not precise dating, I suspect.
Khosref Pasha is reported dead in Feb 1855.
Ibrahim Pasha is reported dead in Dec 1845.
No doubt if I could look at the typescript, it would talk of the death of Napoleon - and his birth as well.
If indeed that typescript has been indexed and is the source of the weird stuff above, then several comments apply from me:
- It is perfectly sensible to index such a typescript;
- It is perfectly sensible to include all such names in the typescript no matter where from - it would be impractical to start trying to exclude such stuff;
- It is not remotely sensible to put such indexes in a collection entitled England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950;
- The combination of "Burial" as a type and "Northumberland" as a place is seriously misleading. The only sensible interpretation of that pair is that the subject was buried in Northumberland. Remember, these records say things like Event Type = Burial, Event Date = dd/mm/yyy; Event Place = Northumberland;
- There should be a specific collection for newspaper reports that makes it clear what's going on. ideally, the name of the newspaper, including the place of publication, should be recorded in dedicated field(s). Reported event should appear but in a manner that doesn't mislead someone into thinking the event was necessarily in the place of publication;
- If you can't see the original document (and these say "Image Unavailable") then you have no chance of realising what's going on - and let me emphasise that this is still just a theory from me.
Note that when I say "seriously poor 'indexing'" I put 'indexing' in quotes because - again - I want to make it clear that the bulk of the blame - if my theory is right - lies not with the indexers themselves but with the people who decided that newspaper reports were like parish registers, and / or who didn't raise the alert when checking whether the output looked sensible.
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@Adrian Bruce1 comments:
"It is not remotely sensible to put such indexes in a collection entitled England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950"
My theory is that a whole load of material that happens to be held in Newcastle upon Tyne Central Library (or possibly at Northumberland Archives) has been categorised under that England, Northumberland, Parish Registers, 1538-1950 heading. My ancestors' County Durham records have either been assigned as Northumberland PRs (or even as Northumberland non-conformist records), so who knows what other material someone at FamilySearch has thought appropriate to add to this collection!
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