1851 & 1861 Scottish Censuses on Ancestry.com today ....

[grannysrock]

AnneM said

How about these ones.

Family in Leith 1861

William McSween Head 22
Elizabeth Raid Wife 22
William McQulla son 4 months.

Any guesses for their real name?

Well I guessed Elizabeth's maiden name was Reid . McSween sounded like a name, but their son's ?

Thanks to the IGI , I think I know their name to be MCQUEEN. Obvious really, You apply ze following formula:
You take ze second half of one name and add it to ze first half of ze other ....

By the way , Ancestry lists 11 people of the McQulla surname worldwide !




Sally

[pinkshoes]

How about Archd Barton and his wife Rosanna (1851 census) who were both born in Gasgoa, Lanarkshire.

No problem finding them but is this the work of a human team?

Best wishes
Pinkshoes

[grannysrock]

Pinkshoes - the jury's out .....


I have found a few more rellies today thanks to Ancestry - I still needed to use SP to confirm a few things - but this was restricted to BMD material. Took the line a bit further and it got very interesting indeed - what I had thought to be the lesser brother spawned a dynasty of much more newsworthy peoples than our lot. Plenty scrapbook material. Love it.
I might never have started on that branch without Ancestry - glad its there.

But a couple of things are irritating me about the Ancestry census - and this isn't about the quality of the transcription , its about what the transcription contains or says it does .

Firstly why is Marital Status not shown ? You don't realise what a useful bit of info that is until it isn't there...(Also irritating is that the records aren't presented in the correct order, meaning you need to copy the records and sort them yourself to make sense of some households. )

But the Big One is the invented "parents " information . No-idea whether humans or computers are behind this - but this "data" is a pure invention. As we know only the relationship to the Head of the household is normally shown on the census . but Ancestry is inventing other relationships - ie if person X is stated to be son of a male Head, that means Head's wife is X's mother . If X is stated to be grandchild to head , and Y is stated to be son of head, therefore Y is the father of X ....

I came across "records" like this today, which were completelu wrong. By inventing data that was never recorded , persons who rely on these transcriptions alone could be completely misled , especially as it does not say "we made this bit up " .

Am I being too pernickety ( van't remember how to spell that) ? Possibly. But isn't it our job/hobby to work out how people are related ?

Silly born Leigh, Edingburghshire, as I may appear to be great great grandchildren. But what will the country be?

[emanday]

Just discovered, went back to trying to find some of my English son-in-law's rellies after he gave me some new info.

WARNING! If you are looking for someone in or born in Somerset and it doesn't show up, stop using the county criteria. They could very well be in Somershire

[DavidWW]

.....snipped........
But a couple of things are irritating me about the Ancestry census - and this isn't about the quality of the transcription , its about what the transcription contains or says it does .

Firstly why is Marital Status not shown ? You don't realise what a useful bit of info that is until it isn't there...(Also irritating is that the records aren't presented in the correct order, meaning you need to copy the records and sort them yourself to make sense of some households.

Indeed, since it's far from uncommon for there to be no male Head, but is that because he has died and his spouse is now a Widow, or because he's away working away from home? "M" or "W" allows a view to be taken!

But the Big One is the invented "parents " information . No-idea whether humans or computers are behind this - but this "data" is a pure invention. As we know only the relationship to the Head of the household is normally shown on the census, but Ancestry is inventing other relationships - ie if person X is stated to be son of a male Head, that means Head's wife is X's mother . If X is stated to be grandchild to head , and Y is stated to be son of head, therefore Y is the father of X ....

Hadn't realised this, and you're not being pernickety in the least (US alt. persnickety , but "originally C19 Scottish of unknown origin" according to my Collins English Dictionary; The Concise Scots Dictionary prefers pernicketie or pirnickitie but can only state uncertain in relation to origin!, but has the definition that I prefer - "of things: requiring close attention or great care.....").

Given the numbers of early deaths back then it must be quite frequent for one of the adults in a household to be a step-parent to a child or children. Sometimes such a child's "correct" surname is shown when the mother had remarried (but watch out for a remarriage to someone of the same surname as the first husband!), but most often, in my experience, the kid takes the new husband's surname; and then, of course, if it was a situation where the father remarried, there's no change of surname involved.

As to the situation where X is stated to be grandchild to head , and Y is stated to be son of head, therefore Y is the father of X, what a load of complete and utter nonsense to make out that this is always the case, as it sometimes is, but what about any daughters?, - why the assumption that the same surname means that the child's parent is a son, as opposed to a daughter?; or the quite frequent situation where the child involved is "parked" with its grandparents while the father or mother is away working somewhere else.

What particularly concerns me is that some of those coming new to genealogy will accept what is written, since Ancestry must know what they're doing, mustn't they ?

over .............

Silly born Leigh, Edingburghshire, as I may appear to be great great grandchildren. But what will the country be?

You're fortunate , as one of my lines all appear in 1881 as born in that weel kent London suburb - "Leith, Middlesex", - we've never managed to establish the reason for the move away from the Edinburgh area after 1861, and the move back after 1881 - I mean who's worried about the difference between "dlesex" and "lothian" , - don't answer that .

David

[SarahND]

If X is stated to be grandchild to head , and Y is stated to be son of head, therefore Y is the father of X ....

Hi Sally,
Could you give us the example of the grandchild one? I keep looking, but for all the households I try, the index only gives the relationship to head, as given in the census. If the relationship is son, daughter or spouse, then that name is given in the "parent or spouse names" column. If not, the column is left blank. I do see that the spouse of the parent is also listed in the parent column as if he/she were also the parent, but I don't find the leap from grandchild of head to son/daughter of child of head.

All the best,
Sarah

[SarahND]

On the other hand, I just found something odd while looking for Heather's Janet Anderson in the 1861. There is a Janet Anderson whose spouse is Janet Anderson. One of the Janets is male and the other female There are children as well as a brother in the household. I think this is probably a case of reading Janet's name twice. Either the person or machine who read the census read the wrong line or, as I have seen before, the actual census taker wrote the same name twice but left the other details intact. Surely it was a machine, however, that then went on to list the father and mother as Janet and Janet for the children...! Here is the reference if anyone can take a look at the original:

Eastwood, Pollokshaws, Renfrewshire
Address: 39 Main Street
ED: 4
Page 2
Household Schedule No. 10
Roll: CSSCT1861_75

Janet Anderson, Age 28, Relationship: head, Gender: male, Spouse's name: Janet, Where born: Aberdour, Fifeshire, Occupation: Freestone (a rolling stone gathers no moss?!)

Janet Anderson, Age 27, Relationship: wife, Gender female, Spouse's name Janet, Where born: Pollokshaws, Renfrewshire

George Anderson, Age 10, Relationship: brother, Gender: male. Where born: Aberdour, Fifeshire, Occupation: joiner

Mary Anderson, Age: 5, Relationship: Daughter, Father's name: Janet, Mother's name: Janet, Gender: female, Where born: Pollokshaws, Renfrewshire, Occupation: Schooler

Elizabeth Anderson, Age 3, Relationship: Daughter, Father's name: Janet, Mother's name: Janet, Gender: female, Where born: Pollokshaws, Renfrewshire

William Anderson, Age 11 Mo, Relationship: son, Father's name: Janet, Mother's name: Janet, Gender: male, Where born: Pollokshaws, Renfrewshire

[grannysrock]

SarahND wrote:

Could you give us the example of the grandchild one?

Here's one . Note I have added the line numbers and sorted the recorfs by line number

At N2 Trafalgar Street Greenock West

1 Margaret Lamb abt 1789 Greenock, Renfrewshire Head Greenock West Renfrewshire Ann Alasted None Joiners Widow
2 George Lamb abt 1820 Greenock, Renfrewshire Son Greenock West Renfrewshire Joiner Black Maker And Turner Master Employing 130 Men
3 William Lamb abt 1821 Greenock, Renfrewshire Son Greenock West Renfrewshire In Compary (firm Of 3)
4 Thomas Lamb abt 1823 Greenock, Renfrewshire Son Greenock West Renfrewshire In Company
5 Jessie Lamb abt 1828 Dalkeith, Edinburgh Daughter-in-law Greenock West Renfrewshire
6 Thomas Lamb Neill abt 1848 Greenock, Renfrewshire Grandson Greenock West Renfrewshire
7 Jane Lamb abt 1850 Govan, Lanark Grandaughter (Granddaughter) Greenock West Renfrewshire
8 Margaret Millar abt 1811 Greenock, Renfrewshire Servant Greenock West Renfrewshire House Servant
9 Elizabeth Clark abt 1834 Greenock, Renfrewshire Servant Greenock West Renfrewshire House Servant

Ancestry claims the following Relationships

Persons on Lines 2,3,4 have as mother Margaret.OK.
Person on line 4 4 has a spouse Jessie and Line 5 has spouse Thomas - could Jessie not also been married to William or George or someone else not at home ? From the line order, you'd suspect her to be Thomas' wife , but one can't be certain.
Persons 6 and 7 have parents Thomas and Jessie, despite one of them having a different surname. Jane probably is their child but Thomas Neill more likely to be the son of Margaret's daughter Jane Lamb ( married Robert Neill ) . Doesn't matter whose kids they are - my point is that this information isn't given and can't be derived.

I admit I haven't looked at the original on SP - perhaps there are some additional notes stating that Jane Lamb and Thomas Neill are the children of Thomas and Jessie - but I really don't expect that to be the case.

It takes quite a while to harvest the data out of Ancestry - so if you want some more examples I'll just tell you the name of the person.

eg Thomas Anderson in Cupar aged 13 ( 1851 census) has a new mother Agnes Wanless . His real parents weren't at that address on census day. I do have the original of that one. Oddly they haven't made Agnes the mother of the two other Anderson children.


I'm sure I can find some more ! Just trying to remember 3 generation households where the parents of the grandchildren weren't present.

Sally

[SarahND]

Hi Sally,
I see what you mean-- those are a mess. If you are interested enough in those people to get the actual image, do tell us if there is any justification for the relationships presupposed!!

I guess I have been lucky in the ones I have looked up so far, since I haven't found any that give relationships that are not directly to the head, even when there are grandchildren in the house. There's this one family I have been following in amazement in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, that generates an amazing number of illegitimate children. The mother never married, but had a number of children, who then also had children-- often with several different surnames, and then those children have more illegitimate children... and they all end up in the same household. The IGI gives their births with both parents names, so I could double-check whose child is whose, but the Ancestry index doesn't even attempt it Since the grand old lady who started it all is still there in 1861 at age 91, all relationships are still to her as head. I suppose there was no way for either human or machine to figure out other relationships, since none of the children has the same surname as any of the adults...

All the best,
Sarah

[DavidWW]

No comment

David