Genealogy Chat

Gosh.......what a response! Thank you for your kind words of advice and encouragement. Jill M, I know about district change. I was born in Knowsley and my Birth Cert' says Lancaster. All my school related stuff said Whiston Lancashire, and I married from an address in Liverpool 34. I never moved but the boundries did. And as for 'parish' and parents moving address between siblings..............! My point was really about entering the details that you do have correctly. Kat, I am always changing my views. I discover new things everyday. Sometimes the right answer is 'don't know'. Anything else is a guess - and then people won't know to provide you with the information they may have. What would be really useful would be a chronologically indexed history of place names. I might put my tree on hold while I work out if I could create such a tool. Good Luck to you all in your research. and Meercat, you sound like a really interesting sort of dude.

I recently followed a splendid tip on this board and printed off a list of 'My Names'. I was quite surprised (!) at the number of UNKNOWN, I have, also the number of people just called Father or Mother. Even I didnt know who they were supposed to be! I am slowly slogging through, changing these Unknowns to 'Unknown wife of James Bloggs' - that way at least I will know who they are, even if no-one else does! This spurred me on to check other things - oh, dear, a large chunk of my family come from Gawsworth in Cheshire. I have entered this no less than 5 different ways! However, spelling is always going to be a problem in genealogy and have not yet seen a more efficient, or foolproof, way of entering geographical details. For instance, one branch of mine come from Manchester - a district called Newton Heath in some situations, or Miles Platting in others. Which do I choose? And if I make a choice, I miss the OTHER option, which may be the only one known to someone else! (And, as for spellings of names, I always enter exactly what I have found, no matter how daft, with the correct spelling in brackets) Olde Crone

Allan I agree with all of the above. You will notice that pre 1837, when you get back that far, and you are looking at Parish Records for your info that on a marriage entry it will say perhaps that both are 'of the parish'. You can't assume that they were born in the parish tho, they could have moved there either with or without their parents. So where would you put them born? If I am reasonably sure from other info I have gleaned I will put the County, or even County? its better than unknown. I would love to be more specific but as in life --genealogy can be a real mystery. I'll be interested to see your reply when you come online again as to whether your opinion remains true. happy hunting Kat (always looking for the truth) ;)

The nearest I can find is George Bernard McArdle in Liverpool, Mar 1861 vol 8b p 32. Sorry. I also looked at MacArdle etc. Kate.

On second thoughts, Rosemary, if I were you I would go with 'Cardiff, Wales' as in 1861 he is 3 months old born Cardiff living Cardiff. Until you find his birth registration, anyway. It should be either Mar or Jun 1861 and I'm just looking through the images on FreeBMD for it. I'll send you a message if I find it! Kate.

Rosemary, if I were you I would put 'unknown' for his place of birth, but unfortunately you will have to choose England or Wales for the country. Then if and when you find his birth registration you can put the correct details in. Kate.

What do you do when according to the census records a person is born in 3 different counties? Here's one example: Bernard McArdle 1861 and 1871 born in Cardiff, Wales 1881 born in London 1891 and 1901 born in Manchester. These are not transcripton errors. It's written clearly on the census image. I know for sure this is the same person as he is living with his mother on all but the 1891 when he is with his sister who was also born in 2 different places: Richmond,Yorkshire and Manchester, Lancashire. Only the mother's place of birth remains consistant: Manchester. Rose

I am currently working through an 'audit' of my tree going through people in the order in which they appear on the 'My Relations' list and updating their details with any new information I have or can find. But it is going to be a long job! As I go through I am putting their birthplaces into the new format (mainly because it won't let you do an update without country of birth). Kate.

I must say that, though I recognise that some people have some quite specific challenges between them and correct spelling, it's certainly worth using auto-complete where it's relevant/feasible - and also worth going back occasionally to make sure that you haven't transposed any letters - as I do regularly! I often look at names people have typed in and ask myself how they can expect anyone to match with their entries when they ''chop themselves off at the ankles'' that way... and then I go back to my tree and discover I've been doing the same! ;-) ''teh'' and ''eth'' are very common problems for me, and that's just here, posting to a thread. My finger-coordination for typing sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. And even when I go back to read over what I've typed, I don't always spot the errors - certainly not immediately. Christine

The other problem with cities or even towns is that as they grow, places where people were born are amalgamated into the cities/towns, I have this quite a bit in my family, so I tend to go with, for example Horton, Yorkshire is now Horton, Bradford, Yorkshire. However, I have a quarter/year reference then I will enter the District name until I receive the certificate and prove their place of birth. Everyone unfortunately works differently - no uniformed way to do it

Allan, Over time and updates the fields for data entry have changed. You may find that some of those entries where added a long time ago when you only had one field to fit everything and no standard to follow. From my own experience, I anticipate it would take several evenings hard graft to standardise all my entries to the new system. However, a timely reminder to double check where I put my fingers as I quickly typed the tree in initially is one I could have done with. :o)

Afraid I tend to agree with Jess. Incidentally West Derby used to be bigger and more important than Liverpool and Norris Green and Fazakerly are now parts of Liverpool if that's any help. Early in C20 Fazakerley at least would have been a village on it's own just as Kirby used to be half a century ago. If you hadn't put in Liverpool I very much doubt you'd have got any of the above. I've had Toxteth Park in a lot of cases. All these districts of Liverpool used to be little places in their own right.

I always try to check that what I enter is correctly spelled, but its tricky when you have to cope with surnames that change, like Maling/Mealing/Melin/Mellins or Chowns/Chouns/Chounes etc. Similarly, places of birth vary from census to census - my Cornish lot are recorded as Mawgan/St Columb/Mawgan in Pydar and even Maurgan on one census. Similarly, one of my rellies is down as born in Stoke, and St. P. Eventually I discovered it should have been Stoke Poges! NELL

If I understand you, you have FOUND all these people. There would surely only be a problem if you couldn't locate them. I have noticed several people have shown their ancestors born in the 1850s with birthplaces of Sunderland, Tyne & Wear or Lambeth, London. This is completely and utterly wrong, but they know what they mean and other people understand what they mean. If you enter a birthplace from a census, the description will vary from census to census. My Portsmouth ancestors will have recorded birthplaces of Portsea, Landport and Portsmouth. Changes in local government may mean that children and their parents all born in the same house will have different official birthplaces. This does not present a problem, as a search on 'Port' will throw up all the possibles. The problems that arise from misreading censuses, or errors on censuses (I would not have recognised 'Armston' as Hempstead with no more info than a single census) hopefully are remedied as people discover more. As for typos, I would love to be able to say that I never make them, or at least always spot them when I do. Alas, that isn't true. But at least this site does still allow us to search on parts of words, so we can find most of the entries we want. (Just don't get me started on the idiotic GR software that doesn't display baptism dates and places for pre 1837 events.)

Allan , if you are lucky, your were born in a big city - mine were not. If you think yours were born in say Liverpool, all well and good, but when you later discover they were actually born in West derby will you change it to that? Granted mis spelling are not helpful, but isn't say Liverpol more helpful than ''DUNNO''?

So what do you suggest people enter in your example, just Liverpool? That would not work in cases where there is more than one, such as Newcastle. I do know what you mean though, try Stoke on Trent, you get all sorts! The problem is that there is no standard way of entering places of birth. I think that they have tried to resolve this on the new 'Tree Builder' by adding drop down boxes to select the places from but half the places I need aren't there! Even speaking for myself, I can't remember when adding a new person whether I last used 'Stoke on Trent', 'Stoke-on-Trent', 'Stoke on Trent, Staffs' etc etc and I have far too many people in my tree to go back and review them all! Sam x

I have only recently begun to use genes* to try to research my family tree. I have immediately spotted a problem when trying to view one name by place. I wanted Liverpool but this is what people have entered.................. Liverpo/ Liverpol/ Liverpoo/ Liverpool/ Liverpool ?/ Liverpool Hostpital/ LIVERPOOL Merseyside England/ LIVERPOOL Merseyside England?/ Liverpool, England/ Liverpool, Fazackerly/ Liverpool, LAN/ Liverpool, Lancashire/ Liverpool, Lancashire, England/ Liverpool, Lancs/ Liverpool, Norris Green/ Liverpool,Lancs/ Liverpool?-....... It stands to reason that putting in the correct details helps others link up with your tree. Any chance that people review their details using the new 'autocomplete' method. If this is what I found for a place as famous as Liverpool, I dread to think what else is acting as a barrier for those seeking links. Just a though.