"Devonport, Devon" treated as "Port, Devonshire" in 1911 census of England & Wales
I found this in Verify Places and it is, I'm sure, not the first time that I've seen this.
George L Ferris (GNK3-VCJ) and three of his siblings are in the "England & Wales Census 1911" with a birthplace of "Devon, Devonport". That's on the image, which I have checked on FindMyPast. FMP indexed all 4 with a birthplace of "Devon Devonport" - i.e. perfectly correct.
In FamilySearch, on the 1911 census record, the same 4 children (George L, Percy O, Thomas - the son of that name, not the father, and Arthur P) all have a birthplace of "Port, Devonshire".
See https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XW5G-LCD?lang=en
(I have no idea if that URL will work but GNK3-VCJ only has the one source attached)
"Port, Devonshire" should not appear - it should be the value as indexed by FMP (but maybe spun round?), i.e. it should be "Devonport, Devon" or maybe "Devonport, Devon, England" - I've no idea how the birthplaces are processed.
Specifically, "Devonport" should not be turned into "Port" - Devonport (one word) is the name of the town.
Also "Devon" should not be turned into (the earlier name) "Devonshire" - the FS Standard Places uses the short form of "Devon", though "Devon" does have an Alternate Name of "Devonshire" (quite correctly).
As I say, I'm certain that I've seen "Devonport" being turned into "Port" before.
@SerraNola - can you get "your" engineers to work out how "Devonport" got truncated to "Port"? Thanks
(I'm less concerned about the county being "Devonshire" - it's an odd transformation but presumably, since it's an Alternate Name, it ought to not cause too many problems.)
Answers
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@Adrian Bruce1 FYI link works fine. Not even an "original" breadcrumb on this one!
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@Adrian Bruce1 Yes, I found many examples in search results of Devon, Devonport showing up as "Port, Devonshire". There are so many of these inexplicable place names I could show to engineers, but they have their plates full trying to find the solution to fix them. Progress is being made and treatments being tested, but no predictions for when we'll see results. As for this one, I would guess that it was programmed to look for abbreviations of the county names. It picked up "Devon" and then made "Port" the town. Not acceptable, but then none of them are.
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The 1911 Census image and the Findmypast index both show “Devonport, Devon” loud and clear for George L. Ferris and siblings. But over on FamilySearch, that got mangled into “Port, Devonshire” — which, as you guessed, isn’t a real place at all. Looks like their indexing system misread “Devon, Devonport” and chopped off the “Devo-” part! Hopefully FamilySearch’s engineers patch this up soon. Until then, I’d recommend manually correcting the place name in your tree if needed.
More record search tools: https://yourroots.com/search-record/country
FamilySearch record: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XW5G-LCD0 -
Wow, wasn't expecting my hometown to come up. I've noticed this too in other contexts: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/7572/records/3280756?tid=&pid=&queryId=42a1ffdd-a009-4e2d-a4b0-8d2b101d7320&_phsrc=lbD1249&_phstart=successSource Not sure if you will be able to see this but will describe it: An Ancestry index for 1881 census:
Name
William Cause
Age
70
Estimated Birth Year
abt 1811
Relationship to Head
Head
Gender
Male
Where born
Port, Devon, England
However, the image itself clearly says "Devon, Devonport".
I find it interesting this is happening on Ancestry too. I think the system is trying to delete "Devon" out of the place names.
I haven't got an issue with birthplace of "Dock", though, as "Plymouth Dock"/"Dock" was the name for Devonport at the time. But "Port", no, this isn't right.
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@J-3094 - how interesting. However, it is at least explicable, if not excusable.
If you dig around in the source details of that 1881 Census Index, it says
"1881 British Isles Census Index provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"
So the FamilySearch error has been copied over to Ancestry. Oops.
(The big three of Ancestry, FS and FMP do a lot of exchanges of stuff such as images and indexes - maybe one organisation provides another with a set of images and in return they get a set of indexes, perhaps for a different collection. It tends not to be publicised out loud but you will see honest attributions like the above.
Big Three is in the context of the British and Irish Isles. No idea about what happens in mainland European genealogy)
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