Bob Scott of the Jefferson County, Indiana Rootsweb list, that was very
enlightening about the problems with the 1830 census 1850, 1860, 1870 and
1900 censuses indexed by
Ancestry.com as well as other pitfalls to avoid. I
have come across the Iowa rather than Indiana problem before, but your
explanation makes it quite clear and may avoid missing a record for other
genealogists. I am always wondering why I can't find people in various
censuses, and this is yet another reason. Many people use Ancestry Library
Edition at their local public library, so they also need to know of these
problems. Please read Bob's posting below my signature.
Laura Mitchell
Vigo County, Indiana
----- Original Message -----
From: <BobWScott(a)aol.com>
To: <INJEFFER-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 10:54 PM
Subject: [INJEFFER] Ancestry transcriptions
I would like to advise anybody who subscribes to
Ancestry.com that
when you
use the census records, do not rely on the transcriptions that ancestry
posts.
Always go to the original image.
For example, the various censuses, whoever did the transcription read the
abbreviation Ia. as meaning born in Iowa. In fact, it meant Indiana and
Iowa was
always spelled out. If you do a search on the 1850 census for Indiana and
put the birth place as Iowa, you will find 116,283 people list, which is
a
migration pattern that obviously didn't happen.
Do a search for those born in Iowa in Switzerland County and you get 7,903
born in Iowa out of a total county listing (the ancestry county6) of
12,935, or
more than half.
The 1850 census is the worst, but this happened through the censuses in
the
1800s and appears to have depended on individual transcribers.
Another snafu involves reading Ken. as Kenya for a birthplace. Th is did
not
happen in the 1850 census. They havd 1,592 in the 1860 census born in
Kenya;
908 in 1870; none in 1880; 460 in 1900. If you look at the images, it's
obvious most of these people (given their race) and the places that other
people
in their household were born in, they weren't born in Kenya.
Also, in 1830, the transcription lists over 1700 Jefferson County
residents
as born in Lancaster Township. What apparently happened is that the
transcriber missed the note that has "Jefferson County exclusive of
Lancaster Township"
and lumped in Milton and Shelby Townships and I don't know what else.
I've been trying to get them to correct the Iowa stuff for two years. All
I
get back is form responses that I should go to t his online form and note
suggest changes on individual names (which obviously is not going to take
care
of thousands of non-Iowans)
As near as I can tell, they aren't all that interested in fixing things
and
that if you use their transcriptions, beware.
Bob Scott