The Transcript Trap
In an age where more and more records are being added to FindMyPast and Ancestry, it might be tempting to think there’s little or no point in viewing the originals. I can understand why: archives can sometimes be tricky to visit in person, particularly if you work full-time or live at the other end of the country. If you have northern ancestors but live in Portsmouth, for example, you might not fancy the 270-odd miles journey to Northallerton to visit the local record office. Besides which, subscription services always provide a transcript of the records, so you might be wondering why bother viewing it in-person if you can get all the information from the comfort of your own home.
Yet I am a huge advocate for seeing the original. The first reason is that working with original records is brilliant: there’s really nothing quite like handling documents hundreds of years. The second reason––which is much more practical––is that they can often give you details or information which aren’t transcribed for the online entry. Parish registers are a classic example: it only takes one enthusiastic scribe or clerk to provide otherwise lost snippets of information, and you suddenly find out your great, great, great grandmother was a triplet. Or perhaps your ancestor met a grisly ending, and the clerk went to the trouble of recording it in meticulous detail.
Marital banns are another great example. Read out loud by the parish curate three consecutive Sundays before a marriage took place, marital banns were a public announcement of a couples’ intention to marry––and a great resource if the marriage certificate is missing. Summaries of these documents are widely available online now, and they usually provide the basic information: bride, groom, parish and date of marriage. Yet viewing the originals can provide clues which might otherwise go undetected. Each marital bann had to be read in front of two witnesses, usually a relative or friend, to announce a couples’ intention to marry. These names can provide important clues to branch out your tree, and it can turn the genealogical pursuit on its head trying to work out how they fit into the picture. Alternatively, marital banns can offer clues about the socio-economic status of the family as it was custom for both the bride and groom to write their names. It was not uncommon, however, for one or both of the bridal party to leave a mark, usually a cross, indicating that they were unable to read or write. Whilst low levels of literacy alone can’t be used to gauge prosperity levels, it does give a give a crude indication as to the type of “sort” your ancestor may have belonged to.
But perhaps the most important reason for viewing the original is that online transcriptions can not only be misleading, but also completely wrong. Take, for instance, the marital bann of Susannah Lazier and James Eve. On an initial glance, the online transcript seems sufficient: it tells you the name of the bride and groom, their marital status (single), and the place and date of their intended marriage (1805 in Maldon, Essex). From all the information given, you might be forgiven for thinking it was enough to trace the respective families into the seventeenth century.
However, a quick search for Susannah Lazier doesn’t lead anywhere: the only return on the online platform is for the martial banns between her and James Eve, and she doesn’t appear in any of the census records or parish registers. Ultimately this appears to be a dead end, with no apparent baptism record for Susannah. Yet all is not as it seems. If we return to the original marital bann, we find James Eve and and Susannah Larkin announcing their intentions to marry, not Susannah Lazier. Somewhere along the line, the bride’s surname had been transcribed into something altogether different, and who knows when—and if—it would have been corrected and the correct Susannah traced.
Errors in transcription are surprisingly common, and it is always worth going back to the original source to verify the information to save yourself some time in searching for a mythical family. So, my advice is to avoid building an entire tree based on transcripts alone, and remember to view the original: they may just be the source of your proverbial brick wall.