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I was just doing some census research, and found some laughable transcriptions. Even more wild than usual. I do appreciate Ancestry's alternate name feature, including being able to correct it myself! But sometimes, they are pretty laughable. And a good lesson in how far off base your ancestor's name might have been transcribed.
Man was George Quackenbush.
1910 its main transcription was Heath George Duncker, with George Duackembush & George Quackenbush as alternates.
1910 its main transcription was George Ouachenbersh. with George Auschubach & George Quackenbush as alternates.
I was just doing some census research, and found some laughable transcriptions. Even more wild than usual. I do appreciate Ancestry's alternate name feature, including being able to correct it myself! But sometimes, they are pretty laughable. And a good lesson in how far off base your ancestor's name might have been transcribed.
Man was George Quackenbush.
1910 its main transcription was Heath George Duncker, with George Duackembush & George Quackenbush as alternates.
1910 its main transcription was George Ouachenbersh. with George Auschubach & George Quackenbush as alternates.
Thank goodnes for the alternates!
What odd transcriptions have you found?
I've found so d*mned many over the years that I have come to wonder if mental midgets are hired to transcribe from the original records..........sheesh!!!!
I have loved doing genealogy, it has really been a wonderful pastime over the last four or five years, and the discoveries and historical associations have been (to me) amazing.
But this topic is my hot button...a red hot button. I really go ballistic sometimes when I discover after endless searching that some witless transcriber has taken a perfectly legible name and turned it into a stunning fantasy creation. I'm seventy-four and on a lot of drugs, but the ones some of these transcribers are taking gotta be purchased on the street!
And I know it's Georgia Lee because it's my great-grandmother whom my mother was named after.
At least that kind of makes sense - "Georgia Lee" does sounds kind of like Georgie if you say it fast. Probably, the enumerator just misheard and then assumed Georgie was a nickname for George and thus male.
I have a female Jessie who was recorded as male on the 1860 census (her gravestone says "daughter of..." so I'm pretty sure she was female, lol) - it's not uncommon with unisex names or names which have very similar female and male forms.
I can see how some names might get mangled because of the accent of the speaker. I wonder how 'Valeska' sounded to a transcriber when spoken by my straight-off-the-ship Prussian g-g-g-g grandmother? I saw on one census that it was written as 'Joanna'. Getting the sex wrong - that's a little harder to puzzle.
I also wondered about the life of the census taker . This is an example of a modern enumerator Life at DrTom's: The life of a census enumerator
In previous decades, did these people have to deal with residents who had busy and hectic lives? Did they try to get the information (more detailed than today) from a woman who had a baby on her hip, 6 more clutching her skirts, who needed to get the hand-washed laundry off the line and the wood stove fired up for the family's meal? Did they have to jog alongside the plow of a farmer who didn't want to stop because he needed to get another quarter seeded before it rained?
I doubt that the job of an enumerator has ever been easy. I've come across pages covered in flowing Spencerian script; very easy to read; that makes me think that person took their time to diligently and legibly gather information. While on other pages, it looks like a ham-fisted person using a carpenter's pencil scrawled everything down as fast as they could.
It wasn't a given name, but one of the funniest I ever encountered was someone whose address in the US on a passenger list was given as "Bahaba" with no state. I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be, until I realized they were from Maine. It was Bar Harbor.
In teeny tiny letters over a crossed out name was something that looked like Raynud to the transcriber.... My Uncle Reggie -- Reginald. Living with his grandfather.
And everyone on that side of the family keeps thinking that weirdly named Baynum boy child living with his (step) father and his second wife is Reggie.... no matter WHAT I tell them.
That makes me crazier than badly transcribed names. THat and the fact that when these people remarried the children just seemed to take the husband's last name no matter who's kid they were...
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