An example of why you should always check the original registers!

[Wilkes_ml]

I'm doing my partner's tree and tracked back to one Wallace family in Houghton, Hampshire via the census and the ancestor in question (William) is born in 1837 (and made it into civil registration!).

Checking the I.G.I coverage, the Hougton baptisms for that time frame were covered - and a search of the I.G.I. threw up a few baptisms of James and Hannah Wallace, with 2 being baptised in 1844:

Hannah bap. 24th Nov 1844
Adelaide bap 24th Nov 1844

However, no sign of Wiliam who I know was born in 1837!

So, I sent off for orginal parish register fiche for Houghton, and duly checked through the baptisms and this is what I find:

No.350 Hannah bap.24th Nov 1844
No. 351 Adelaide bap. 24th Nov 1844

and on next page

No. 352 William bap. 24th Nov 1844
No. 353 James Crawford bap. 24th Nov 1844

So it goes to show that you should always check the originals and not rely on indexes!

I'm wondering whether a whole page was skipped ( I can check to see if others on page are on the I.G.I)

[Mike_E]

Hi,

If you have the pages in front of you , and you don't mind searching for each entry on the IGI, might be worth transcribing that page from the registers if you have time, and submit it to the IGI.

[Peter Goodey]

Wouldn't you say there were quite enough submissions in the IGI?

[Wilkes_ml]

It's actually a bit strange, as on one page there are 3 Wallace baptisms - only 2 in the IGI, of the rest of the page, some entries are in the IGI and some are not. Then on the next page, the only ones on the IGI are three member submitted entries and not extracted entries (incuding the one other Wallace baptism). So it isn't just a case of one page being missed out!

When I get time I'll send the corrections if it is simple enough to do.

[Geoffers]

I can't help at all, I just wanted to congratulate you on checking the original source - thorough research deserves reward!

It goes to show that the IGI should just be taken as an incomplete guide - somewhere to look for ideas which need to be followed up.

[*bunty*]

It goes to show that the IGI should just be taken as an incomplete guide - somewhere to look for ideas which need to be followed up.

It didn't take me too long to work this out ;). I totally agree :).

Yay for checking the real deal :D.

[Alan Welsford]

This is one of those curious ones, unless I'm missing something.....

The IGI batch has a number starting with a 'C', (C004008), that looks like it should be proper Parish Register data, rather than "user submitted".

It says "Extracted birth or christening record for the locality listed in the record".

But the "Source Call No" is blank, and it's not possible to go and see the source of the data. (Unless I'm missing something).

Also the fact that everything is in mixed case, makes it look more like user submitted data. Generally I find extracted data with a documented PR/AT/BT source appears all in upper case, (although I'm sure there are exceptions).

I don't know how you find out more about this batch, but I'd be more suspicious of it than one where I can see the source of the data.

I don't know how big Houghton is, but that batch only has 8 entries in total for 1844. That doesn't sound a lot.

Alan

[hughar]

It is indeed a strange batch. Only 262 entries, and all female.

[suedent]

It is indeed a strange batch. Only 262 entries, and all female.

I have come across a few batches that list just female baptisms including:
C030708 St Mary's, Leyton, Essex
C020340 Christchurch, Newcastle Upon Tyne
C013183 St Hilda, South Shields, Durham

[Alan Welsford]

More curiously this batch....

C146661

claims to contain Parish Registers for Houghton 1669 to 1876 (The Hugh Wallis site says 1714-1876), but has absolutely no data at all for 1844. (In fact it looks like there's nothing after 1827).

An all female batch ? What's going on here ? It looks like they need to load the matching all male batch to give us the missing entries :confused:

EDIT

I note I've cross posted with Sue, who acknowledges "all female" batches do occur.

A quick Google around other sites indicates it does happen quite a bit. I couldn't find anyone who could explain why.

There did seem to be concensus on....

1) It's for relatively newly loaded batches.
2) People didn't seem to have encountered "male only" ones.
3) It's normal 'C' prefixed batches where this is happening.

So for some reason I can't fathom the LDS must be chosing to prioritise female baptisms. This seems very odd if they have gone through registers and only transcribed the female enties, if they have any intention of doing male as well. It must be a lot more effort to go through each register twice, surely ?

[Peter_uk_can]

For many years, the IGI records would showed that my father was the result of a miraculous conception. Coming from 4 generations of staunch methodist farmers it was well known, locally, that brandished pitchforks were sometimes used to encourage unwlecomed visitors to leave.
Perhaps this explains why our family also had a page missing.

[Sandra Parker]

Well in many cases, throughout history, it seems that the pitchforks weren't waved soon enough!!!!

Sandra :rolleyes::rolleyes:

[Waitabit]

During one of my last visits to local LDS Library, a Lady said that Female members who were transcribing for the IGI, WERE ONLY ALLOWED TO TRANSCRIBE FEMALE entries. Perhaps they didn't have many Males available to transcribe the Male entries.

Not necessarily Gospel, I haven't been able to go there for some time or I'd ask to confirm..May even phone tomorrow..I'm curious now !

Wendy