I've always found the Ancestry transcription of the Scottish censuses like the curate's egg, excellent in parts. But now I've got mired in a large bit of raw yolk.
Looking for my OH's Sturrock family in and around Dundee, I found them by the thousand in the IGI. I managed to find her ancestor's bap. and trace him back through the censuses to 1861, but I couldn't find the family at all in 1851. Fortunately the mother of the brood had a relatively unusual first name, so I searched on that plus d.o.b. plus Dundee as a keyword. Up they popped as STUNOCK.
Nothing too exciting about that - double r misread as n. Except that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them seem to have been mistranscribed the same. Having recorded a correction for my family, I have to wonder how many other people are vainly searching for Sturrocks.
Looking for my OH's Sturrock family in and around Dundee, I found them by the thousand in the IGI. I managed to find her ancestor's bap. and trace him back through the censuses to 1861, but I couldn't find the family at all in 1851. Fortunately the mother of the brood had a relatively unusual first name, so I searched on that plus d.o.b. plus Dundee as a keyword. Up they popped as STUNOCK.
Nothing too exciting about that - double r misread as n. Except that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them seem to have been mistranscribed the same. Having recorded a correction for my family, I have to wonder how many other people are vainly searching for Sturrocks.
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