Adding to census records

[ozgirl]

Sometime ago I made a correction to a mistranscription on an Ancestry record in the 1851 census. Now there are two more corrections. Where the persons age had been given as 69, giving an estimated birth year of 1782, it now says that birth year was 1784, having been baptised on 22 aug 1784, and on the census the place of birth is N K, but the amendment says Chiddingstone Kent. I thought you were only supposed to correct what is on there and not add to it?

[PeteW1959]

It is one of the things I find really annoying about Ancestry. Yes, corrections should only be for transcriptiion errors and anything written on the census form should be recorded as is. I have submitted several such corrections, and I suppose with my detailed knowledge of the family it is easier to read poor images because I know what it *SHOULD* read.

However there are a huge number of entries that have been corrected to different details to those on the census form. The worst are the ones who have put down a married woman's maiden name, and these come up in searches AHEAD of original entries.

[kylejustin]

i entered a correction on a census entry yesterday, only to be told that my aunt (her login) had amended it. yet it did not show up in the search.

[Olde Crone Holden]

Ah, the married women's maiden name thingy........this was the idea of some bright spark at Ancestry who devised a progamme to go through the census and pick up "mother-in-law". This was then deemed to be the wife's maiden name (still with me?) but of course we all know that mother in law could have been married more than once and so could the wife, so a fairly useless tool, in my opinion.

Other corrections to Ancestry, in my experience, either take four hours or four months.......

OC