This is mostly a rant about Ancestry but I do have some specific questions about handwriting at the end.
I recently started a thread about handwriting here
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/genealogy/5236815-anyone-here-good-at-deciphering-old-hand-writing-very-old-parish-register
and I just want to thank everybody that replied.
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One suggestion, from @Shetlands, made a real difference to understanding things:
"Something I've always done is look at the rest of the pages and compare words so it's easier to decipher what they are. It can be tricky when the records are done by different vicars / curates but you can usually find enough done by the same hand."
I followed this suggestion and once you see how known words (eg common names or months of the year etc) are written then it makes it a lot easier to recognise how individual letters are written so you can then spell out other words.
So, doing this with the parish register that I was looking at I came across something a bit odd. I decided to check what I was reading in the parish register with what the record on Ancestry showed.
This is where I came across a huge problem.
On Ancestry I searched for any entries for this parish in a particular year and compared those entries with the scanned image of the parish register.
Lots and lots of the entries in the parish register were simply not recorded by Ancestry at all or were so different from the actual name (examples below) that you simply could not guess what the actual name was. There were also baptisms recorded as burials or marriages recorded as baptisms etc. There were entire years that had not been transcribed at all.
It appears that the transcriptions were done by different people. On one page, half of the entries might not have been transcribed and the other half were totally wrong. Then, on the next two facing pages the transcriptions were absolutely spot on in every detail (apart from a couple of minor mistakes) but then turn the page and it’s back to the rubbish again.
I have no idea if this is a one off or it has happened with other documents as well.
I checked very briefly some other nearby parishes. Some seemed spot on and some seemed rather patchy but nowhere was as bad as this. Maybe this was just a one off? I don’t know.
But it has made me seriously reconsider how I use the search function on Ancestry going forwards
Where I have reached dead ends or brick walls, in some cases it may be that Ancestry have either incorrectly or not transcribed the records at all. They may exist (like in the example of this parish register) and Ancestry have simply done a rubbish job of transcribing them.
It really has made me reevaluate what I thought I knew about Ancestry and has got me thinking that I need to now go back and double check all of the other early records that I casually assumed were accurate when I first started out on my search for my family tree.
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Some examples of the poor transcriptions I came across
The baptism of “Somma Trifominge” was
“The christeninge of Thomas the sonne of Edward Viserd…”
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Similarly, the burial of “Tho Heriftoning Gantoy” where the father was “Olive Gantoy” was actually
“The christeninge of alice hankox was in october the iiii day”
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The wedding of “Tho Fomingo” and “Haboll Eddan” was actually
“The christeninge of Isabell the daughter of walter myles & margaret his wife was in december the xv day”
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“Joen Maride” was buried and the father was “Edwards Maride”
The actual text was
“Wylia grevestocke clarke [he was in the church] was maried to Jone Edwards in november the xv th daye”
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The burial of “Hynes Wilddonge” was actually the burial of “Agnes grevestock wyddowe”
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The burial of “Wylia Postboye” was
“Wylia norris a pore boye was buried in Januarie the xi th day” [looking back at earlier records he was 13 when he died.]
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So if you are looking for any of these families then you aren’t going to find these baptisms, marriages or burials on Ancestry if you just use their search function.
But maybe you will now? My DH insisted that we update ones that we found were wrong, so hopefully now people searching will be able to find them.
One that did make me smile though was the baptism of Joan to parents “Homer Wyfo” and “Elizabeth Wyfo”
In reality, the parents were:
“thomas bruer & Elizabeth his wyfe”
Whoever transcribed this thought that “wyfe” was the surname (but miscopied it anyway as Wyfo)!
I’m aware that Australians often use an “-o” on the end of words as a diminutive. When I saw this I just had visions of some one saying in an Australian accent “G’day, I’m Homer and this is Liz the wifo”.
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@YellowPixie said
"Brilliant though that the priest/minister has recorded the name of the mother as far too often you just see "Elizabeth Smith daughter of John" and the mother doesn't even get a mention."
Yes this does make a huge difference, especially when the men have the same name, live in the same village and are having children at about the same time.
Sometimes the entries went into a lot of detail. For example, from a neighbouring parish I noticed this entry
“Willm Nicholas, the bastard sonne of Willm Nicholas of the pirsh of Barkeley yeoman, and Elizabeth Dirett his late servant, was baptized on the xxii th day of April”
The parish of Berkeley was about 12 miles away with its own church so I would guess they were trying to keep this from the neighbours.
But some entries just made me stop and consider how things have changed.
“The christeninge of Jone … was in September the v daye and was buried the same day”
I was particularly struck by these:
“The buriall of Margaret Morgan in childbed decesed was in September the xxi th daye”
then four years later
“Elizabeth Viserd decessed in childbed & was buried in Julye the xi th daye”
A few years on from that, a Richard was baptised on 1st June, his mother Agnes (aged 41) was then buried on 3rd June and he was later buried on 28th June
All three of these women’s deaths are in the parish register that is viewable on Ancestry but they have not been recorded so are not searchable on the website other than knowing to look at a particular page of the parish register.
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Anyway, I did also say that I had some questions about handwriting; and I do.
The first is about a name that I see commonly written as Wilia or Wylia but the letter “a” has a long curved line that goes over the top of it. I’ve included an image below of an example of this.
Does a curved line after a vowel indicate a letter m or n follows it? So should Wylia be read as “Wilia” or is the curved line after the “a” indicating it should be read as “Wiliam”?
I noticed this most often with the name Wylia but I did also come across the same thing in a will from the same time and the word “Item”. Sometimes it was written as “Item” and sometimes as “Ite[curved line]”
I’ve included an image of this as well. The will appears to read.
"Item I give more to margret my daughter my best brasse pot"
"Ite[curly line] I give to Joane pit my daughter my lycke brase pan"
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The next handwriting question is about Greek letters. I think a name might be meant to be “Christofer” but it is written as “xpofer” and the letters x and p have a line above them.
Could this be the curate using the Greek letters chi and rho (for Christ) and simply writing them in the same way that he writes the letters x and p?
I’ve attached another image and I believe it says:
“xpofer Balinger was married To agnes Stallerd noveber ix th”
Was the name Christofer ever written this way or am I reading too much into this?
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Then finally, I came across four women whose names appear to be spelt as either Emmot or Emote.
Was this an actual name or am I just getting it totally wrong? Again, image attached. Was this a real name that has perhaps now just died out or am I missing something very obvious?
I’ve attached an image that I believe says
“The christeninge of thomas the sonne of Emote pitte unmaried was in december the xxviii th daye”
With the other women, their names were spelled Emmot.
Sorry this turned out so long, I just started typing and it all sort of just came out. I was just rather annoyed at all these missing records I came across. But any help anyone can give with the handwriting I would be very grateful for.