Transcription errors for Ireland census 1901 and 1911
I noticed a few transcription errors in the 1901 and 1911 census while adding them to the tree:
1901 census:
- Standing family: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPB2-FY2Z
- Mabel Frances' name is spelled incorrectly
- William's occupation is "Master Plumber", not "Martin Plumber"
- Emily Alice's religion is spelled incorrectly; should be "Episcopalian", not "Epis Copalace"
- Dann family: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPBP-Q98X
- The Dann family lived in Co. Down, Northern Ireland, but when you try and attach this record to any of them, their residence is listed in Co. Tipperary due to the event place being incorrect.
1911 census:
- Standing family: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QYDZ-XC6Z
- Occupation for Mabel Frances is spelled incorrectly ("Schalar")
I had a search on the community and saw other user's flagging them on these forums so hopefully this is the right place to post! This seems to be a common occurrence re: the Irish census though - is there any possibility of users being able to amend these errors ourselves? With the original images of the records directly linked, it'd be much easier to just correct it ourselves, particularly if we're familiar with the locations in Ireland.
Best Answer
-
First, let me clarify that I am not connected with FS - I'm not staff, a mod of this community, or even a member of the LDS Church. I am a frequent user of the website.
Any user editing of an index on FS is only allowed when the images are hosted on the FS servers. For example, we cannot edit any index-only record set because there is no image to compare to the index.
It is certainly possible that some data corruption or loss could occur when data is imported from NAI, for example, to FS. However, your example of the Dann family's move from Down to Tipperary reflects the work of the place name algorithm. The information was imported correctly but then modified at some point later. Until recently the word "original" appeared beside the place as indexed, but that has now been removed making it less evident that the place name algorithm is at fault.
As for flagging the developers of the place name problem, we've been trying to do that for quite some time. The place name algorithm moves folks from Westmeath to Mayo or from Louth to Armagh without rhyme or reason, but we don't seem to have gained any traction with corrections or stopping further changes. See this thread. Within that thread is a link to another thread with more background.
Hope this helps.
5
Answers
-
The 1901 and 1911 Censuses of Ireland were not indexed by FamilySearch volunteers.
On the landing pages of the two censuses
is the statement:
The index was created by the National Archives of Ireland.
The National Archives periodically updates its database to incorporate reported errors. I don't know if FamilySearch incorporates those updates.
1 -
Hi Aine, thanks for getting back to me on this.
I understand that these census records weren't indexed by volunteers in FamilySearch, so it seems like the issue is how FamilySearch ingests this data from The National Archives into their own database. The 1901 census for the Dann family, for example, shows them as living in High Street, Ballycross, Co. Down, but when that record was ingested by FamilySearch, the Dann address was saved as High Street in Co. Tipperary.
Someone raised this issue last year and in that post I saw this explanation which makes a lot of sense:
So I suppose my query is in two parts:
- Transcription errors. If FamilySearch doesn't update their own database with the corrections the National Archives makes to their census records, then is it possible to allow FamilySearch users to manually correct those records if a mistake is found? Similar to how Ancestry approaches user-suggested corrections for their records.
- Location errors. Based on those previous posts on the community, this is a big issue that families are being categorised under incorrect counties, is there a way to flag this with the FS dev team to ensure crucial fields like the District Electoral Division (DED) are incorporated when being ingested into FS and considered when assigning a standardised location?
Thank you!
0 -
Hi @Áine Ní Donnghaile, thanks so much for explaining this all to me! I'm pretty new to FamilySearch so I appreciate you giving me that extra context and background. I'll keep an eye on that thread to see where these place name errors should be reported, rather than clogging up this forum with them! Again, thanks for explaining it in such clear detail, it definitely helps!
1 -
Good luck with your research @danielleadev. Happy to help.
1