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I was going through birth dates in my family tree, and making corrections to my tree in Ancestry.com. I think in the beginning I was only entering the year of birth, and now I'm making sure I put in the month and day when I have a record to prove it. (I was also collecting repeated/coincidental birthdays, which mentioned in another thread).
What I've noticed is that many records of births on Familysearch are exactly one year off, usually one year after the actual birth date. I'm talking at least 25-30 birth records. At first I dismissed it, thinking maybe Familysearch recorded a baptism as a birth, or maybe there was a data entry error. But 25+ cases, consistently being one year off?
In many of these cases, I have alternative records, from other websites, actual historical documents, newspaper announcements, tombstone inscriptions, and death certificates that give the correct birth date, but the one on Familysearh would make the person exactly one year younger. If it makes any difference, most of these births were in PA and NJ. I wonder if it's possible that some computer bug affected the info somewhere between the source of the records and Familysearch?
Typical example: Ida Rose H---- was born April 3 1893 according to church christening records, her father's naturalization papers, and her marriage record, but the record on Familysearch from "Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950" says April 4 1894.
Anyone else encounter this? What do you think the explanation is?
Most of these errors that I have seen are the result of FS ( and others) taking a person's AGE shown on a Census listing , and extrapolating from that what YEAR they were born in. Such that people with birthdates after the Census was taken are typically 1 year behind, vs. Census year to birth year math. When doing searchs, I always do +/- 1 year.
Your example sounds to me more like a handwriting/transcription error.
I was going through birth dates in my family tree, and making corrections to my tree in Ancestry.com. I think in the beginning I was only entering the year of birth, and now I'm making sure I put in the month and day when I have a record to prove it. (I was also collecting repeated/coincidental birthdays, which mentioned in another thread).
What I've noticed is that many records of births on Familysearch are exactly one year off, usually one year after the actual birth date. I'm talking at least 25-30 birth records. At first I dismissed it, thinking maybe Familysearch recorded a baptism as a birth, or maybe there was a data entry error. But 25+ cases, consistently being one year off?
In many of these cases, I have alternative records, from other websites, actual historical documents, newspaper announcements, tombstone inscriptions, and death certificates that give the correct birth date, but the one on Familysearh would make the person exactly one year younger. If it makes any difference, most of these births were in PA and NJ. I wonder if it's possible that some computer bug affected the info somewhere between the source of the records and Familysearch?
Typical example: Ida Rose H---- was born April 3 1893 according to church christening records, her father's naturalization papers, and her marriage record, but the record on Familysearch from "Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950" says April 4 1894.
Anyone else encounter this? What do you think the explanation is?
I note that an individual's birth date during a year is generally rounded up by the census taker. So actually born in April 1863 is noted 1864. I report all the birth date years I find which can vary between census. So 4/1863, 1864. Generally the death certificate or burial information will provide the actual birth day/month/ year.
I think the quality of the Familysearch website has gone downhill and I'm not sure why. I remember when I first started doing genealogy research on my family about three years ago, the results you'd get were REALLY good and deep. Now it seems like it's a lot more like ancestry.com where your search results give you a ton of bad stuff and you hope you can find the needle of good info in the haystack of junk results.
I think the quality of the Familysearch website has gone downhill and I'm not sure why. I remember when I first started doing genealogy research on my family about three years ago, the results you'd get were REALLY good and deep. Now it seems like it's a lot more like ancestry.com where your search results give you a ton of bad stuff and you hope you can find the needle of good info in the haystack of junk results.
Their search results are favoring Census records now in the way that ancestry does. I liked the older version better, too, but am glad familysearch has added a lot of records, has more images than they used to, and they do make it easy to search by collection. Just page down on the search page for browse by collection names. Put in words and it will narrow your search. For instance, I type in "Massachusetts" for all my blessed Yankee ancestors and it pulls up collections that include that word in the title. Keep in mind alternatives like "New England" or "Puritan" or whomever you're researching.
Someone posted a book search section they have which is really good. Which is a much better alternative to Google books, since even many old books are shown in snippet form only. I did find one or two books on familysearch that link to another site involving some sort of membership, and backed right out of that. Almost all the searches brought up freely available books, either that they have the rights to or they're pre-1923 and so are in the public domain.
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Federal Census
I liked the older version better, too, but am glad familysearch has added a lot of records, has more images than they used to, and they do make it easy to search by collection. Just page down on the search page for browse by collection names. Put in words and it will narrow your search. For instance, I type in "Massachusetts" for all my blessed Yankee ancestors and it pulls up collections that include that word in the title. Keep in mind alternatives like "New England" or "Puritan" or whomever you're researching.
I did find one or two books on familysearch that link to another site involving some sort of membership, and backed right out of that. Almost all the searches brought up freely available books, either that they have the rights to or they're pre-1923 and so are in the public domain. 
