As an aside, one of the more recent (and welcome) changes with
ancestry.com
censuses is the opportunity for researchers to post a correction note about
indexed names that they know are mistranscriptions. This is very helpful
when names have been either badly misspelled by the census taker and/or
mistranscribed by an indexer for any of several reasons (sloppy handwriting
included). It's up to us to take a minute to post corrections about names
we're positive are indexed in error. It doesn't actually change the indexing
but provides an accompanying note that the name could be [something else]
and I believe, brings it up in the search engine more accurately.
- Joyce Harris
-----Original Message-----
From: casey-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:casey-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
Behalf Of jec2(a)gte.net
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 6:19 PM
To: casey(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [CASEY] Wayne Co, TN Caseys
...The problem is not the abbreviations, but the change in cursive writing
and modern transcribers ability to read the older cursive.
Some J's looked like I's or vice versa, so it behooves us to look carefully
and verify the modern transcriber's interpretation. The transcription
problem needs to be kept in mind with the indexes as we find them on the
internet. Look at all transcriptions with suspicion until you make your own
review of the "original" writing.
Jim Crownover-