Mistakes and statistics

I just checked and yes, there is a note for John Clemonts (Clements) which gives the folio as 45 and not 46. I checked Ancestry and it should be 45. But I do not understand why, when I click on the arrow beside the name in the family listing, it comes up as being correct. It clearly says folio 46 beside the names. So in Ancestry, they are in folio 45 and in FMP, folio 46. The birth dates (1801) are the same, so why does the single entry give John's birth date as 1806, and his ancestor number as 40?

Both census list the name as Clemonts and that is how I entered it into LC. Under the name John Clemonts Ancestry has put (John Clements)

 

The order is completely by chance. It was just the order in which certain aspects were noticed by me. I think that Peter's notes on the matching process are very good but it seems that some people might approach this topic from a slightly different angle and end up with the wrong expectation. To me, this whole matter is fundamental to the purpose of LC and so I stayed up late to try and give an alternative description which might give some enlightenment rather than leave it and forget to comment later. I hope that my comments when taken with others will help to clear up any misunderstandings. After all, what is the point of using LC and expending a lot of time and effort if the matches cannot occur because some of us are entering slight variations?
By the way, I do not claim to be perfect and always know what needs to be done in all circumstances so welcome corrections from Peter or anyone else if I have said anything that is unclear or incorrect.

Obviously the census reference must match exactly for LC to even realize that there may be a potential match. After that, the other fields identify individuals within the subject household, some of which may be very similar if not identical. Hence the benefit of Peter's fuzzy logic matching which suggests that a further manual check may be beneficial. Unfortunately, some members may approach any second check with preconceived ideas and not notice subtle differences in their entries from the original census/transcription. I also can be guilty of that so try to be very careful when re-doing such checks and do not go in with an expectation that I must be correct. If only there could be some way of resolving such issues where all parties are convinced that they are correct, rather than just ignoring that there might have been a possible match.

Almost certainly, because each member will say that their entry is correct. There is no means for negotiation and resolution.

Unfortunately, FMP and Ancestry take different approaches to adjustments in their transcriptions.
FMP make changes but do not alert anyone that they have done so, presumably assuming that everyone is only interested in the latest, correct information whereas LC members may have relied on the value from years previously and may not realize that a correction has been made.
Ancestry do not change the record but do add a comment indicating an alternative suggested value, or more, at least for the name of the person.
Neither attempt to alert earlier readers about such changes.

When I add an entry at LC from Ancestry and then notice that the grey arrow check reveals a different value from FMP, I usually alter my submission to match that shown by FMP on the assumption that other members will probably do likewise, or have used FMP originally. That does not make a lot of sense in the example quoted. However, it is essential that differences noticed as a result of the grey arrow check are not allowed to persist as that would inevitably lead to matches being missed. This is especially true when Ancestry has given the wrong value of Folio. As Peter has often mentioned, do not rely on the transcription, except in the case of the UK 1881 census.

 

Should I then do this with my John Clemonts? Ancestry says the folio is 45, but FMP has it as 46. I entered the family as 45.

I just finished entering a family that had the folio incorrect with Ancestry. I could not understand why, when I used the numbers given by Ancestry, that FMP came up with zero. When I looked for them in FMP the folio was different. Once I changed it to the FMP entry, everything balanced, so to speak.

But I still cannot find any reason for the extra Mary Ann Riches. I am sure she must be the same lady listed just below with her husband and daughter. There are no notes in my FTM program to show anything different.

 

Yes. This is another case where Ancestry is wrong for the 1841 census. John Clements/Clemonts appears on the right hand page of the display. If you look at the census form, you will see that the page number (10) is in the middle at the top and the Folio Number (46) is to the right, also at the top. The left hand page (9) is Folio (45), as can be seen on page number (8) by clicking on the left arrow half way down the screen to go to the previous census page. Folio identifies a sheet of paper, not the two pages displayed at the same time.

 

I am very confused by 'age'.

By age I think you mean year of birth.
Year of birth only displays on My Ancestors page once. It is either in italics or it is not.
The birth year in italics is the corrected birth year and FTA is obviously using the birth date that has been ascertained from other records.

The age is not displayed on My Ancestors page, it is in the editing section.
Are you saying we should examine every person to see if the age has been entered correctly???
That would be a very long and arduous task for those of us who took the advice/suggestion to use FTA.
On random checking, for those I entered using FTA the age matches the age in the census.
Finding that out entails going to the person in my tree, finding the Ancestry census attached to that person and looking at that to see if it matches what is in the entry.
Why? because I keep getting asked to pay to see the transcriptions in FTM!!
The head of the house is not obvious in the limited edition of FTM that is displayed when using the arrow, especially if the ancestor is a boarder/lodger.

 

The age tends to be incorrect (or slightly "off") in censuses, and in order for Lost Cousins to be able to match the records, the age should match the one on the original census entry, not any corrected form. You can correct it if you wish, and then the year of birth would be shown in italics.

I think I mentioned this in another discussion - but unfortunately my LC facts on my FTM tree were deleted due to errors in syncing. I am now having to re-add in all my LC facts (in a side note, if anyone knows how to add a fact to multiple people at once in FTM it would be greatly appreciated).

Unfortunately since I have "corrected" a large number of entries from the census, a lot of records were duplicated on LostCousins (I've deleted at least 200 spurious/repetitive entries) and I still have to check over them all as well. I can see this taking me a number of weeks, especially since I have to "go back" to work next week.

 

Age is equivalent to Year of Birth. You enter Age from the census and LC converts that to YoB. Only corrected names and age (YoB) appear in italics on your My Ancestors page and are for your information only. They do not get used by LC. LC uses the uncorrected census values that you entered and it has stored 'out of sight'.

FTA uses the values that you have in your tree at the time that you generate the GEDcom file. This may contain corrected information. Entries submitted by FTA which do contain corrected values can be identified by seeing italic values on My Ancestors page for the corresponding individual. You do not need to do a detailed check of an entry made by FTA if there are no values shown in italics for the individual on My Ancestors page.

FTA is the best way to go if you have a lot of uncorrected entries to add to LC. I tend to enter references to LC as and when I find them so do not run the risk of having to perform a lengthy check after the submission.

Presumably, you mean FindMyPast rather than FamilyTreeMaker. Viewing the transcriptions should always be free. Are you sure that you are clicking on the Transcription icon rather then the Image icon? Viewing the images is not free and requires a subscription. The icons are next to each other.

I think that the only way to determine who is Head of Household is to examine the census form/transcription.

 

I don't think this is always true. Maybe your experience is different to mine...

Yesterday, when checking through my entries for the 1881 census, I came across one I'd previously uploaded via FTA which had no values in italics. On clicking the check arrow I noticed that the surname was spelt differently in the census (and I checked that the Ancestry transcription agreed with the FMP one, which it did). FTA had used the corrected information from my tree, but it had not been italicised. When I changed the entry to match the spelling in the census, the name was then italicised (as FTA had entered the correct information in the bottom part of the 'edit ancestor' page).

I thought I'd already checked all my entries, but clearly not. Shows it is worth checking even if you think you've already done so, and even where there aren't any italics shown. And I agree that checking is normally quick: it's just those split across pages, where head of household has a different surname to your relative, or those with census reference differences as discussed above, that take a bit longer.

 

Thank you for pointing that out to me.

Sorry, I had overlooked the possibility of having different name/age(YoB) data in your tree from that which might be on any census form for a year which is about to be submitted by FTA. An example might be that there is a variation in name/age recorded for different years, ie middle name omitted for 1881 but recorded for 1911.

That means that all FTA submissions would need to be checked after they have been processed by LC, regardless of whether there is a grey arrow for that entry. I am beginning to think that manual submission would be quicker and easier that using FTA. Any views from other members?

 

Sorry everybody, Tim applied his post before I could add mine and I had not placed the relevant quote from Helen7 at the front of my post. I hope that is not too difficult to understand.

 

What if there is no grey arrow for that census? There are a few.

As Peter has said before, entering details for a new household only takes about 10 seconds per individual and there is no need to perform further checks afterwards.

 

I just entered the 1881 census information for my 3rd great-uncle and was informed that two records need checking. There is a red ! next to the top two names, but I do not know why. The initials and ages match and are correct for the information I have. He obviously could not be bothered to fill in the names but just used initials and they are very hard to read; his wife's name was Sarah but it was transcribed as L, as were his two daughter's names, which also began with an "S". I added the visitor because he became the elder daughter's husband the following year, so I knew the name. I checked them against the arrow and it appears to be correct.

 

Did you adjust the entries so that they matched what was on the census? If so, and they do, the red exclamation marks will go away if you think your entry is correct. However it possibly means that someone else has that record slightly differently.

 

Ok, I found the problem. In Ancestry the whole family was included in one transcribed entry, but in FMP the 19-year-old daughter was on the next page. I added her separately and deleted her from the original entry and the little red marks went away. I had thought the red marks referred to the two people they were next to, not the whole entry.

 

They do, so this is confusing. Please can you give more description?