INMONROE-L Archives

Archiver > INMONROE > 2000-04 > 0954696545


From: Ted Stout <>
Subject: Re: Genealogy Library Marriage records - where they came from
Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2000 07:29:05 -1000


Linda

True. I was searching Indiana records trying to find where in the state my
ancestors Willis Lamb and wife Sarah came from. The printed record I found
in the Indiana Genealogist had Willis Lane married Sarah Pennington so I
went right past it. Not knowing what county to look in and that being 20
years ago when we had to use snail-mail, I was not able to look further.
About 10 years later I found a distant cousin in Oklahoma who had found one
of Willis and Sarah's sons had died in AR with a death certificate showing
the mother's name as Pennington. I was finally able to track the family
back to Monroe Co. When I communicated with the library, it was apparent
that the initial transcription had originated the error. I would still like
to see someday why the original looked like Lane to someone. Given that
error, I was able to find two of Willis' brothers marriages listed as Lane
in Alabama transcriptions!

Ted

Linda Katherine Jenkins-Wensel wrote:

> An error, no matter how it gets that way, is still an error. As I told
> Randi earlier, the information in Genealogylibrary.com.....by the time
> it got to them was third generation. The records came from the Original
> Record Located County Clerk's Office, Bloomington, then were compiled by
> Indiana Works Projects Administration 1940 (some errors in transcribing
> could have taken place here) and then a copy was made by Indiana State
> Library. Genealogylibrary.com then copied them from the Library's copy.
> And I will make a bet that Genealogylibrary.com used a scanning program
> that turns the scanned item into text......an OCR program I think it is
> called. It reads the document and then puts the words into a word
> processor.
>
> What usually happens with these programs, is if the copy is light, the
> scanner can't see some of the lines of a letter, and then the OCR
> program just decides what it should be........as Randi pointed out
> letter e's were picked up as o's...etc
>
> I really don't think the errors were from a bad typest. I bet if you
> have access to the Indiana State Library, you will find fewer
> errors...........I am just using the names as pointers, and forgetting
> the dates, 50 or 60 year differences can really mess you up!
> Linda Jenkins Wensel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randi Richardson <>
> To: <>
> Date: Saturday, April 01, 2000 4:46 PM
> Subject: Genealogy Library
>
> Linda sent me a sample of Kinser marriages she had
> copied from this site.
>
> Of those marriages noted, I compared a sample of 17 against the Monroe
> County Marriage Record indices that have been published by the Historial
> Society. The results were alarming!
>
> Of the 17 marriages reviewed, only three were perfect. The other 14
> marriages contained a total of 32 errors with each wrong letter or
> number
> counting as a single error. A large majority of the errors had to do
> with
> the spelling of names, e.g., two of the Kinsers were misspelled Kinsor,
> James was noted as Jac, Sowders was misspelled Sowdera, and Carmichael
> was
> misidentified as Garmichael. These are NOT small errors. Additionally,
> in
> the two instances where the date of mariage was in error, the date was
> off
> by 40-50 years.
>
> In sum, if you utilize records from the on-line Genealogy Library, do so
> with much caution and always so back as close to the original source as
> you
> can get.
> My reason for doing a comparison, was that I work so much with Monroe
> County records that I just didn't recognize many of the names--a real
> asset
> to me that would not necessarily be true for others.
>
> Meantime, I am very curious as to who provided the Monroe County data
> and
> the source of the information. Does anybody know?
>
> Randi Richardson

This thread: