I have a few comments and questions about Census data available at Ancestry.com. These searches can be both exhilarating and frustrating - sometimes at the same time!


Some things I have noticed:


** Often times the search results near the top of the results list are not even close to relevant IMO, yet the results way down the list - in some cases for me, on page 2 or 3 with 50 items per page - are where I find very relevant matches. E.g., searching for relatives who were born, died, and resided only in one county of PA I get top results from the west coast, midwest, etc., with non-matching spouse name, etc. Then a couple pages back I find a few that match almost perfectly. I must not fully understand the sorting logic they use.


** Errors in Census data, both by the census takers and the transcriptionists. I've found correct entries under incorrect names like "David" but when I look at the document image the name is quite clearly "Daniel". I've come across four like this on a tree with only 80 total people. I found them by manually searching for similar names. I never find them using searches on the correct names from FTM 2010 or Ancestry. I had hoped that the searches would use a fair degree of fuzzy logic to catch these errors, but it doesn't seem like it. Does anyone else have any tips or hints to help root out such errors?


** Other errors are more difficult to work out, and more puzzling. On a Census sheet with my G-G-father and family I noticed the last name for that address was his father. It said "Father" under relative. Yet the sex is listed as F for female! And the age and DOB correspond to my G-G-Grandmother. I figure it could be that she gave her name as "Mrs. Terrence McGowan" and the census taker omitted the Mrs., but then why list her as Father? As I said, puzzling!


I always submit alternate data for these errors, and t=on two I received messages from Ancestry saying that the were changing the entry (where the errors were in transcription), so that'll help in the future.


All in all, I have found only about 50% of the census data that I needed/expected to find. As a matter of fact I am finding very little documentation for my ancestors. And I don't mean the ones from way back; I'm talking all in the 1800s and 1900s. Must be some very secretive families I had.

I did most of my family history research back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, then stopped working on it after two years of not finding any additional info. I figured I had all I was going to get. Then this year I performed a number of detailed searches on Ancestry.com and found a few new facts. That was enough to get my fire going again, so I got out the old tree and started adding. Bought FTM 2010 and put it all in there, as the last version of FTM I had previously was probably from 1998 or 1999! Unfortunately it looks like I have hit the wall again. I still have a lot of searching left in me but it sure gets tough when I go for about three hours a day for weeks on end and get.... nada.

Still looking, though!

Jim

I can certainly relate to and understand the frustrations of researching especially when you are trying to "outguess" the spelling of a name when it was entered...or when it was transcribed, etc. Firstly...keep in mind the one rule: KISS...keep it simple stupid. When hitting those brickwalls in your research, try searching by a first name only or try with just a few letters of the first name...narrow things down with maybe a calculated age...place of birth, etc. Add clues one at a time...and when you are looking thru the list of results remember rule #2...when is a name not a name. i.e.when you see a name that looks absolutely ridiculous...check it out. I found the immigration records formy Italian great-grandmother (with three of her children) after EIGHT years of searching...her last name of Aimone was written over and transcribed as "Quinnie"; her first name (Teresa Nicola) got entered as "Muscol"...found the correct entry when I searched on first name: Col* (for daughter Columbia), a five year option on date of enty and date of birth...and then looking at "Quinnie" as an Italian name...thought it a tad odd...and it was.
So... do not give up...search a different line (I have accumulated almost as much information on the in-laws as I have on the direct lines.)...and you never know what you may discover while you are looking into those other family branches.

Thank you for the reply. It is quite daunting, isn't it? Not that I am complaining though; my hope was exactly what you have provided: other users' personal tips and hints on "creative searching" techniques!

As mentioned in my initial post here, I started my tree in an old version of FTM back in the 1990s when the online databases were just being made available and most searching had to be done only after purchasing a myriad of FTM CDs - I had a whole slew of them (gone now...). And oftentimes I would find that they contained nothing of use to me. Now there are so many databases but trying to find the relevant entries when there are many human errors in them is a real challenge. Of course the errors are certainly understandable, but it serves to make the job a little more difficult.

Also, I always submit corrections to Ancestry if they offer a link to do so, but that doesn't always get things corrected. Manpower issues probably.

Thanks again!

Jim