Collection of records ascribed incorrect location

RaniM

It appears that a large percentage of the England, Manchester, Miscellaneous Records, 1700-1916 collection have been indexed with the Event Place as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States rather than their relevant Manchester locations.

This is causing confusion in both getting hits in a general records search and also when attaching relevant sources.

You can see the issue in this search of the collection for records containing the name "John" between 1700-1899 with the place set to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It returns over 1.6 million hits.

Obviously an individual who, for example, dies in the Witherington Workhouse Manchester England in 1899, is not then having their remains transported all the way to Philadelphia for burial.

I don't know what can be done about it. But I've come up against this issue a number of times now, so flagging it in case no one else has yet.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

According to the Collection Landing Page, the collection and index comes from findmypast.co.uk. Generally, we've heard that such collections cannot be edited. I wonder if there was an error on import.

@SerraNola could you take a look at this one, please? Thanks.

"England, Manchester, Miscellaneous Records, 1700-1916." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 30 January 2025. From various Manchester collections. Databases and images. findmypast. http://www.findmypast.com : n.d. Citing Manchester Archives and Local Studies.

SerraNola

@RaniM I do have this one documented with the following description:

"19,000 burial records for Whittington Workhouse in Lancashire show in search results as Philadelphia, PA, USA. (DGS: 4510268, 4510277, 4510286, and 4510294) 9 million poor law tax records for Manchester township, 1795-1900 (175 films) show in search results as Philadelphia, PA, USA and some as Manchester, New Hampshire."

The errors do not come from Find My Past and are different from standardization errors. The cause is yet to be determined, but we will try to get it to the right team. Thanks for bringing it to the forefront.

RaniM

My thanks to you both @Áine Ní Donnghaile and @SerraNola. I sincerely appreciate the assistance you give and the good work you do. I'm glad this issue is one on the radar, hopefully it is a mystery with a solution.