What to do about incorrect location in record to be indexed?
I am working in the US, New England—Petitions for Naturalization, 1787–1906 [Part D] project and my batch code is [MQZ1-VF4].
The petition asks for the county of birth, and the record lists that as Bandon, Ireland. Being familiar enough with Irish counties to know they are generally preceded by the word County, I did a quick Google search and found out that there is no County Bandon in Ireland, but there IS a town called Bandon in County Cork. Moreover, Bandon was established in 1604 and the person in my record was born in 1882, so it's not impossible for him to have been born there. In addition, all the records I have thus far entered for this project have been for people born in County Cork, Ireland.
The instructions for my project say I can correct misspellings and expand abbreviations in a place name in a petition for naturalization, but give no guidance on what to do for this kind of issue. Do I have the liberty to enter Bandon, County Cork, Ireland for the place name, or do I need to stick with just Bandon, Ireland? The fieldname for the entry at least just says Birthplace and not County of Birth, so Bandon, Ireland would at least still be correct.
I would appreciate any guidance you wonderful folks can offer!
Natalie Str
Answers
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You index what you see, so the birthplace will be County Bandon, Ireland. With naturalization records, you will find people born all over. Even though you have indexed County Cork records, that doesn't mean that you will only index County Cork. You can have County Cork one batch and the next batch would be Rome, Italy. It is also not out job to speculate or assume anything. Using Google is actually frowned upon in indexing since you index what you see.
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I disagree with erutherford on one point: I would index that as Bandon, Ireland. No "county", since it only says that in the pre-printed part, and we don't index the pre-printed part.
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