Sunday, August 19, 2012

It’s a Long Way from California to Columbia


There has been a lot of talk about the quality of the 1940 census index at ancestry.com.  In most cases, I am willing to make updates as they suggest and not worry about the obvious mistakes.  However, this one was just too outrageous not to mention.

I’m talking about Cecil P Bradshaw.  He was widowed and living with his brother in Bell County, Texas, in 1940.
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The first inexcusable error was that his name was misspelled in the index as “Crcil”.  Anyone who is comfortable with English would have come up with “Cecil” rather than “Crcil”, unless it is simply a typo.  No problem.  I added the correct name to ancestry.com.

The second error was more egregious. 
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The state of residence in 1935 was transcribed as “Columbia” rather than California.  Anyone familiar with United States geography at all would not have made this mistake.

And here’s where I have to complain.  Subscribers are not allowed to make updates to the 1935 residence information which means that I have no way of helping others with a corrected index entry. 
Sad smile