FREEBMD-DISCUSS-L Archives

Archiver > FREEBMD-DISCUSS > 2009-02 > 1234698256


From: "Chris Sitton" <>
Subject: Re: Duplicate marriage indices
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:44:16 +1100
References: <120B6AFD295A46249594815E60C0FD89@userd1f209cda9>


The site explanation for multiple page entries for marriages may be found
at:

http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/marriage-help.html

This page is normally accessed from the "Click here ...." link, highlighted
under the search results for a marriage entry's volume and page number and
under the heading:

"Found one partner in a marriage but now looking for the spouse?"

Additionally, you might consider searching the entire quarter's marriage
entries for the district name in question and opting to download and save
the search results as a text file that you may then open with a spreadsheet
application as a delimited file.

This will enable:

a) a fairly rapid sorting of the district's search result data to perhaps
find a potential spouse's known forename(s), or

b) to sort by page number and see whether there may be
mis-transcribed/indexed page numbers for entries the details of which don't
"fit", especially on potentially similar looking page numbers.

Initially you should check the scan for the entry you have found to validate
that the page number has been correctly transcribed and also check the
transcriptions for any other entries that return the same page number. These
entries will normally show an equal number of male and female forenames, but
this is no guarantee that all are correct.

Secondly, check column 7 of the downloaded file for entries allocated code
32. One often finds a page number will be mis-transcribed to the extent that
the submitted page number is outside of the expected range of page numbers
for that district. Entries for these transcriptions are coded 32.

Thirdly, you might wish to check for incompletely transcribed page numbers.
These are allocated a code 64 and are also a potentially good source for
"missing" partners' page numbers.

Finally, by a visual check of page numbers in sequence, you might find three
male forenames and two female forenames on a given page number, or similar
mis-matching.

This might be either because one of the partners was known by two different
surnames or that there was some doubt at the index office as to which of two
possible surnames was the correct name. In most such cases, the forenames
are identical, so if you saw something similar to
Gordon Henry SMITH on the same page as a Gordon Henry SMYTHE, one might
conclude that this is one spouse with two name variants.

More frequently however, the page number is mis-transcribed/indexed.
Subsequent checking of the scans for those entries may, clearly or not, show
a mis-transcribed page number for any "missing" spouse(s) on the page
number that you have found insufficient potential partners for.

When sorting data, please take care to include the whole of the search
results (but excluding the headers and footers) to avoid mis-aligning the
rows or columns compared to the original set.

This sort procedure is more useful for quarters where the results have not
been re-keyed and there are more potential errors. However in some cases it
also works to find the elusive partners for quarters that have been
re-keying and a majority of the initial errors have already been corrected.

If you are completely sure that an entry has been mis-transcribed, the
forwarding of a correction request to the corrections co-ordinator via the
entry's "Info" icon is highly recommended.

Regards, Chris

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Graham F Coker" <>
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 7:33 PM
To: <>
Subject: RE: Duplicate marriage indices

> It is very simple - Before Jul 1911 the spouse name is not recorded on the
> marriage index record. What is transcribed is the details that are on the
> record and there are typically 4 people (2 male and 2 female) on each
> page.
> Sometimes though there are as many as 8.
>
> So when you see these records you can only say that one of the 2 men
> married
> one of the 2 women.
>
> If there are only 2 records with the same data the you cannot guarantee
> that
> these married easch other (though it is likely) - it could be that the
> other
> 2 records have not yet been transcribed for some reason or that the
> records
> had a problem with the data (ie the transcriber could not read a page
> number) and has entered 11_ on one record where the other reads 117. 11_
> does nor match 117 and will not be recordsd.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Kind regards
>
> Graham
> 3497
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> [mailto:]On Behalf Of Ken Punshon
> Sent: 15 February 2009 08:09
> To:
> Subject: Duplicate marriage indices
>
>
> Apologies if this is a duplicate [pun intended], I have searched the
> archives with no success.
>
> Whilst searching for unknown spouses within my own 'forest' (i.e. multiple
> trees), I found a number of instances where there are four (or more)
> people
> with the same Volume/Page data. This was most noticeable when I got the
> apparent result that two women had married in the mid 1800s!
>
> Further investigation has shown that this is not just an isolated
> incident -
> I can apparently find them at will; Jun 1850 24/211 is a good example.
> In those cases that I checked the transcriptions are valid; the original
> scans of the indices have the same value for everybody.
> Is this just some screw up by the index compilers, or some weird
> registration anomaly? Can anybody explain it?
> Should be post a 'health warning' somewhere for the benefit of the unwary?
>
> Ken
>
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