More often than we might like to think original records contain deceit, deception, dishonesty, evasion, fabrication, falsehood, forgery, misrepresentation and other descriptions from a whole list of synonyms for lies.
Repeated lies give the impression of being more trustworthy; they're not. Maybe you're an example. How do you know your date of birth is as stated on the certificate? You grow up celebrating a day as your birthday and find that date confirmed by the date on the certificate. But you wouldn't be the first to have the date adjusted to avoid payment of a late registration fine.
On Canada Day I gave a talk for MyHeritage illustrating the use of the Canadian records they have available, and from other sources that are free. I choose William Northwood, an immigrant to Ottawa from Wolverhampton for a case study.
On Canada Day I gave a talk for MyHeritage illustrating the use of the Canadian records they have available, and from other sources that are free. I choose William Northwood, an immigrant to Ottawa from Wolverhampton for a case study.
The table shows the evidence gleaned from various records for his birth and immigration date. If you just relied on one source you might be quite confident of the date, and probably wrong.Was he born on 9 August 1844, the 13th or some other date? There's a baptismal record in early September 1844.
Does the exact date matter, unless you care whether he's a Thursday's a Monday's child, or want to cast an astrological birth chart!
As for immigration, as far as I can determine none in the table is correct. He appears to have landed not in Quebec City as in the passenger list for the Nestorian from LAC but Portland, Maine, late on Sunday, 1 December 1867.
You can view my MyHeritage talk at https://www.facebook.com/john.d.reid.31/posts/10222686154688232./
On top of lies, there are faults, flaws and other inaccuracies — synonyms for errors. Be it in Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, LAC ... on and on, Transcriptions are rife with errors If it's an OCR transcription of a newspaper, directory or voters list expect more such errors.
The inexperienced genealogist will get upset, perhaps post a rant on social media — "Don't they know that Prince Edward County and Prince Edward Island are different places, as far apart as London is from Barcelona!" It only takes a few minutes trying to transcribe a page of a poorly written document to understand why such errors occur.
The experienced genealogist takes transcription and OCR errors in stride; they're inevitable. The obligation is on the researcher to get as close to the truth as possible using all clues from all resources and favouring those most credible — recorded as close to the date of the event as possible with a credible informant. When you've exhausted best practices you're still left with uncertainty owing to lies and errors.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteI suspect there is no one doing genealogy who has not run into just the problem you have outlined. I have written several posts and articles with these kinds of examples where data is conflicting. We all have to remember that information on documents is only as good as the knowledge of those who are offering it. Transcriptions are the least accurate. I can attest to that personally having made more than a few mistakes with old records. People did lie though, many because they did not believe the government had any business knowing everything about their lives. Others strayed from the truth because they were embarrassed. Illegitimacy was not something they wanted to advertise. I know of one modern example where the birth date of a child was altered by a month so that it would not appear they were conceived out of wedlock. Anyway, your points are worth emphasizing - often! People searching the past records need to be aware of the potential inaccuracies.
For the example of William Northwood you choose to illustrate, did you ever obtain an actual birth certificate for him? FreeBMD list three people of that name, with births registered in Wolverhampton between 1840 and 1850.
By the way, I wanted to watch your presentation but the link does not appear to work for me.
yes, indeed - we've seen it all. While some mistranscriptions leave me shaking my head, I have only to look at some census returns or old parish registers to understand why these things happen. If found on Ancestry, I just take the time to add the correction.
ReplyDeleteAs for lying on records - nothing fazes me anymore...I just remind myself of my training as a historian, the bit where we're told that all documents have a bias.
I agree with the other comments and certainly with the record you have show, John. We have seen it all, indeed, mainly poor transcriptions in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWomen lied about their ages at marriage, about the timing of the birth of a child. Men too, of course.
My favourite was in an 1871 census of a small hamlet in Ontario where the census taker described each man as a drunkard, and each woman as a whore. It went into the record. So long ago, I do not recall the hamlet or name of census taker. Just laughed.