Thanks. I know about Ancestry.com. I believe they use software to transcribe most of their records which is why I don't trust their transcriptions. If no image is available with the transcription, it gets a low-star rating from me until I find something better.
I guess I should have been clearer on this. I was talking about people I knew like my great aunts and uncles and those who share my last name or that I knew. I've seen Boswell spelled as BOSWENN. I know that to be wrong, but I listed it as an AKA anyway. I've only found this at Ancestry.com. In that same census record, many of the first names were wrong too and I've seen this error get transferred over to other people's trees. "Johanna" was listed as "Josephine." This one is typed so it had to be listed in my AKA's. This could have been converted from handwritten to typewritten after the census was taken and transcribed wrong at that time. I can't imagine the census taker had a typewriter with him/her at the time. Bill Boswell From: Michele/Support [mailto:mich...@legacyfamilytree.com] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 12:19 PM To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] When to use AKAs This is a totally different question. Ancestry.com is the worse. If the index says Joan Davis but I clearly see John Davies on the actual page, I record the name as John Davies. I don’t care what the indexer wrote. This happens all the time. On your other point, I would be careful making assumptions about how a name should be spelled, especially on census records. Yes, people were illiterate and census takers could be in a hurry. A neighbor could have been the one to provide the information. You just never know. However… I have a person in my file named Henry Pinkney McMichael. Henry is a girl. If you were to look on Ancestry.com many people have her as Henrietta because they ASSUME that must have been her real name. All of the census takers had to have been wrong, right? How about a Bible entry written by her own mother where she recorded the name as Henry. Never assume. Another example, my great grandmother was named Corrine. Or, was it Corine, Corinne, Corean? You tell me. I record it every way I see because I have no way to know how SHE spelled it (or her mother at the time of her birth). Michele Technical Support mich...@legacyfamilytree.com http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com <http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/> Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
