BUG REPORT - Ethnicity Nonsense
We have discussed the issue of an assigned ethnicity with no factual basis many times, but I've never seen a staff response. If there has been one, please direct me to it and accept my apologies for missing it.
I'll add links to several existing threads, but this is one I saw yesterday that reminded me of the problem, again. Edith Mary Hornsby 9HZ9-R7P was born in Canada; her parents were born in England and Canada. The Source Linker "helpfully" offers American ethnicity when attaching the 1895 Minnesota State Census.
@Sam Sulser @Ashlee C. Please and thank you
Previous threads
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/166314/two-long-standing-queries-problems-still-pending
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/155336/ethnicity-issues
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/141060/how-did-family-search-come-up-with-this-ethnicity-part
Answers
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Another example from the same family from a different record set - Josephine was born in Canada to Canadian-born parents. Still, she is being assigned American ethnicity with no factual basis.
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Not wishing to detract from your main point (but carrying on doing so, regardless!) I wonder if the original record (of Josephine's birth) has her race recorded as "White", as found in the image / source you reference?
Apart from ethnicity being recorded without basis, I believe this has applied to race, too, in certain sets of records - i.e., no indication at all being shown in the original documents (of race or ethnicity).
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@Paul W Josephine's 1867 birth is documented in a Roman Catholic baptismal register with no reference to race or ethnicity. Top left https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9TRQ-9X2N
The Source Linker example I attached is from her 1922 Chicago, Illinois, death record which does document her race as white but states that she was born in Canada and states that her parents were born in Canada. The image is restricted to access at AL or FSC, and I have a copy.
If you look at the Source Linker image I attached, the Source Linker offers both her race, White, and her ethnicity, American, to add to her profile. No need for both, especially when one is fiction/fantasy.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile I will send this to be investigated. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
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Thank you @Ashlee C.
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You are welcome.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to take the focus off the ethnicity issue, only to reinforce the fact that there appears to be a wider issue concerning data being added to FamilySearch indexed records that never appeared in the original papers. I wonder if this relates to the indexing process itself, or a later "refinement" of the indexed material, prior to it finding its way to the historical records database. Hopefully you (we) will eventually get to the bottom of how this occurs and - more importantly - that the practice is stopped.
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The example of ficticious 'information' that I come across most regularly is in birth records where the parents sex is indexed, Mother's Sex: Female, Father's Sex: Male.
One hundred years ago the idea that this needed recording would have been seen as ridiculous.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile It's come to my attention that this issue was never investigated. Have you continued to see this bug when attaching with Source Linker and if so please post recent examples.
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Yes, @SerraNola I do continue to see this issue. I'll have to dig in my files a bit to give you recent examples.
Thank you for following up.
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Just encountered the ethnicity label while attaching a source. I'll leave it unattached so you and the engineers can view.
Source
Thank you.
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And, in the same family, on a death record. Source
I'm at my FSC this morning, and I can see the death certificate which does not even state where the child was born.
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@SerraNola
Back like a bad penny.I was attaching an 1894 English marriage to a couple born in England in the 1870s. The "American" ethnicity reared its ugly head again.
The parties are Hannah Hilton P6JC-FSW and Benjamin Taylor P6KV-SN7. I created Benjamin's profile from the marriage record, so no place of birth had been entered, but the marriage is an English record.
The index of the marriage record https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NNFX-TZ8?lang=en
The image is here: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L965-7CYD?i=236&lang=enThank you.
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And just to be pedantic, in case pedantry helps the engineers, neither Ethnicity nor Race appear on the original source image.
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And, even if one of those had appeared, none of them would have specified American.
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I did collect several examples of this issue a while back, but in terms of priority on my To-Do list it was usually at the bottom. There was an "ethnicity removal" fix up, but records outside of the U.S. have yet to be cleaned up. FYI, ethnicity is derived from the race, is not found in the index, and was not meant to be seen. The bug is in the mapping that's made it visible, but I have to admit that assuming "white" is American is pretty bad.
I'll see if there's a chance of completing the fix up any time soon.
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Thank you @SerraNola
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Here is a link to the original document I just added as a source to those named in the indexed document. I mainly deal with records relating to England, so am rather less likely to encounter the issue being discussed here. Just thought I'd add as another example of where the Ethnicity (Canadian, in this case) has possibly come from, although at least the Race (White) is found on the original.
Alcona. Birth Records 1870, 1871 | Tuscola. Birth Records 1870, 1871
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Off-topic, but a few years ago a collection of early 20th-century prison records, from my home state of Georgia, was added to another genealogy website. Many of the prisoners were people of color. In the language of the time, various shades of yellow were used to describe the prisoners. Sadly, all those prisoners were redefined as Oriental.
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