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Archiver > NJHUDSON > 2002-06 > 1023631111


From:
Subject: Re: [NJHUDSON-L] Ancestry.com discrepancies - a critique
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 09:58:31 EDT


While, I'll admit there is alot I don't like about Ancestry.com census, I do
subscribe and have found it helpful. I plan to renew when my years
subscription is up. It has been very helpful as far as time wise. I can
look though it when I want, at home when ever I have some time, or at work
during my lunch hour, which I prefer since my computer at work is much
faster. Then when I find something I write down the page number and ED and
next trip to the library I print out a copy. I've spent lots of time looking
through different townships in the 1870 census trying to find a certain
family. So its been helpful to be able to look at home then to wait till
Saturday and spent the whole day looking through reel after reel.

As far as the names being incorrect, there are plenty of discrepancies in
all census, that has nothing to do with Ancestry, but the census taker. I've
looked through the 1900 soundex to find my relatives and they are NOT listed
at all. Yet I have a birth record in 1900 that they lived on Gregory St. in
Jersey City, but according to the soundex they don't exist. I'm trying to
find out which ED Gregory St was located in 1900, so I can look through the
ancestry census to see if I can find them. I even subscribed to
genealogy.com 1900 census so I could check the whole USA in case they, by
some chance were not in NJ, but no luck there either, or on some other
relatives I'm searching for. Also, the information given to the census taker
might be wrong if it was given by a neighbor. For instance, I found a
strange thing while researching my irish relatives in mercer county. On one
census their daughter was listed as living at home, which was strange as by
this point she was married with two children. She and her brothers were
shown living with there mother. The brothers where not married, but I knew
she was married plus where were her two sons and why were they not included.
I then looked up the address I knew she and her husband lived there whole
life, and there they were. She was listed again with her husband and two
sons. I'm not sure if all her brothers were actually living at home either.
They may be listed twice also.

What I don't like about Ancestry is that there is no way to move up and down
the page without zoming in and out. When you find the perfect viewing size
you should be able to just move down without changing it. I wrote to them to
see if I was doing something wrong, but thats just the way it is.

In a message dated 06/08/2002 8:35:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
writes:


> The 1920 Ancestry.com census menus suggested that the state, county,
> city and district I needed were complete and available. There was a Head
> of
> Household index. I was researching 2 surnames of a single family, with
> numerous family units in a single community. When I plugged in the first
> surname, my great-grandmother came up even though she was living in the
> household of her son-in-law and identified as "mother-in-law" instead of
> "head of household". On the image of the actual census page, I saw that
> the
> name of her son-in-law (my grandfather) who was the Head of Household, was
> correctly spelled and clearly written.
>
> However, when I plugged my grandfather's surname into the index, my
> grandfather DIDN'T come up, either under an exact spelling or a soundex
> search.
>
> When an index is described as "incomplete", this suggests to me that
> some EDs have been finished but others have not. Such is not the case. In
> my situation, this page of the census had been entered into the index but
> my
> grandfather had been overlooked.
>
> What this means is if you used the index and didn't find your
> ancestor
> where you expected to find him, he may actually be in the census after all.
>
> The index itself may be flawed.
>
> Another annoyance: I acquired the wards and EDs I needed before I
> consulted
> the Ancestry.com database. Yet the so-called "enumeration districts"
> listed
> by Ancestry.com (at least for Bayonne, Hudson County, NJ) are apparently
> their own invention, they are not the numbers assigned by the Census
> Bureau.
> The numbers on that menu appear nowhere on the actual census pages.
> Needless confusion if you ask me.
>
> Another annoyance: The descriptions of what streets are included in those
> "districts" are vague and misleading. In the case of Bayonne, I was VERY
> familiar with the city, and had a street map by my side just in case. Yet
> the addresses I sought were not in the "districts" I expected, based on the
> descriptions provided by Ancestry.com. Despite having exact addresses, the
> ward numbers and Census Bureau ED numbers, a street map and personal
> knowledge of the neighborhoods involved, I STILL had to view over 100
> images
> to find my ancestors. This is unacceptable. Had I paid for this
> inconvenience, I would have been angry. The only saving grace was that it
> was "free", though I "paid" for it with a migraine headache.
>
>



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