Neither extracted nor submitted

[pottoka]

I've just come across a couple of records on the IGI which were neither member-submitted nor extracted from the parish records of the locality. They merely have Source Information, i.e. batch numbers, dates etc.

This is probably not the first time I've come across records like this, but it is the first time that I've thought of asking what the difference is (I've looked at the stickies and the other threads, but haven't come across the answer).

Why is there no "message" to say where the information comes from? How reliable is the information in terms of the IGI?

[Mutley]

Can you give us an example so we can see it too. ;)

If there is some sort of source information or batch number then maybe it can be tracked back to somewhere. ;)

[pottoka]

Hannah Martin christened in Farnworth near Prescot, Lancashire, in 1853, daughter of Ellen Martin.

Ellen Martin christened in Farnworth near Prescot, Lancashire, in 1837, daughter of Thomas and Alice Martin.

I hope that I didn't give you the impression that there was no place-name?

[JAP1]

They clearly are extracted by the LDS (as opposed to submitted by LDS members). Clicking on the Source Call No (1469034) reveals that the records come from:
Bishop's transcripts of Farnworth (near Prescot), 1604-1873. Church of England. Parish Church of Farnworth (near Prescot, Lancashire)

If you then click on the words which are highlighted in the LDS Library Catalogue (i.e. on 'Bishop's transcripts of Farnworth (near Prescot), 1604-1873') it takes you to further information, and then clicking on 'View Film Details' takes you to even more information.

Why it doesn't have the standard message of ' Extracted birth or christening record for the locality listed in the record. The source records are usually arranged chronologically by the birth or christening date.' I don't know.
I'd have to search around to see whether other Bishop's Transcripts batches have the message (no, I won't bother to do that :) ).
I suspect that batches entered into the IGI more recently don't have the message - but that's just an idea.
You could use the Contact form on the FamilySearch site and ask ...

Incidentally, the batch (C005733) is one of those infuriating batches where only the females have been extracted into the online IGI.

JAP

[pottoka]

Thank you very much for that interesting reply, Jap, which seems to resolve the issue nicely.

I didn't know that you could get anywhere by clicking on the numbers! I'll have fun tomorrow looking at all the information available. It's bedtime now. Sweet dreams http://bestsmileys.com/sleeping/11.gif

[Pam Downes]

Incidentally, the batch (C005733) is one of those infuriating batches where only the females have been extracted into the online IGI.
JAP
I wonder if it's because it's only a partial transcript/extraction that's why it doesn't say 'extracted from the record for the locality'?
I don't know how many batches are females-only, and/or whether they are specific to a particular area. If the latter, then perhaps the transcripts were done as a 'local project' for some reason?
Pam

[JAP1]

Hi Pam,

Females-only batches appear all over the place.
Heaps (pre-statutory registration) of the 'C' batches in Ayrshire Scotland, for example, are females only. They are extracted from the Parish Registers and have the standard wording.
Very commonly the recent 'I' batches are females-only (and often have no source information at all - though just recently the LDS have started to provide the source information in response to contact queries).

JAP

[pottoka]

Females-only batches appear all over the place.



Pretty good idea, if you ask me. After all, where would you be without us? |laugh1|

[MythicalMarian]

Hi Pam,

Females-only batches appear all over the place.
Heaps (pre-statutory registration) of the 'C' batches in Ayrshire Scotland, for example, are females only. They are extracted from the Parish Registers and have the standard wording.
Very commonly the recent 'I' batches are females-only (and often have no source information at all - though just recently the LDS have started to provide the source information in response to contact queries).

JAP

Jap - I always assumed the 'I' batches stood for 'Index' - have I been labouring under a misapprehension all these years? It could just be one of those daft links I've made - not the first... :D

[JAP1]

I have no idea what the 'I' stands for |shakehead

Sorry!

What's more, I've seen both 'I' and also 'C' all-female christening batches without the words about 'extracted' and with no source information.

JAP

[Kerrywood]

I have no idea what the 'I' stands for |shakehead

Sorry!

What's more, I've seen both 'I' and also 'C' all-female christening batches without the words about 'extracted' and with no source information.

If you're seriously interested in this, there's an online table of IGI batch numbers (google Ancestry Solutions Batch Number Table in quotes). This may help you determine which batches are extracted and which submitted.

I believe the introduction of batches prefaced with I postdates this table, but there have been several BG posts on I batches in the past, so you could try searching the forums. ;)

Kerrywood

[JAP1]

Hi Kerrywood,

If you Google on this topic, I'm sad to say that you are likely to come up with lots of dreadfully boring old posts by me on various forums/lists!

The topics of 'I' batches, and of batches without source information, and of all-female batches have interested me for quite a while. ;)

Personally, I have no doubt at all but that the 'I' batches are extracted. And certainly no reason to doubt that they are extracted.

When I referred to recent 'I' batches, I guess I was showing my age!! They've been around for years but seem recent from where I stand. :o And there did seem to be almost an irruption of 'I' batches for a while.

However, for years it seemed impossible to get any information about the sources of the 'I' batches. Many of us tried without success. Even people in charge of large LDS Family History centres tried and failed.

Eventually (about a year or so ago) some of us managed to get some useful information about the source of specific batches (i.e. of batches with no source information) by emailing the London FHC.

However now, the really good news about such batches (especially 'I' batches) is - and this does seem to be a new development - that if one submits a contact form asking the source of a batch with no source information, the LDS responds with that information.

See the following thread:
http://www.british-genealogy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51673

I was really pleased that bristolloggerheads submitted a contact form and got the answer to his query! It spurred me to try yet once again - and, hurrah, I got the answer re the specific church in which my grandmother had been christened (the all-female 'I' batch in which it is listed merely says Sheffield).

All the very best,

JAP
PS: When MM queried what 'I' stood for, I honestly had no idea and couldn't remember ever wondering what it might stand for - which is why I answered as I did. Looking back through some of my old posts/threads on various forums/lists (courtesy of Google), I find that I must have known at some stage. |oopsredfa Ah well, put it down to old age. :cool:
PPS: I see that my posts on this matter (I wasn't named) on another forum are even referred to in an old thread on B-G!

[Kerrywood]

The topics of 'I' batches, and of batches without source information, and of all-female batches have interested me for quite a while. ;)
Hi JAP,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I have no personal interest in this topic. Since it was obvious that you do, I was simply flagging up what might have been a relevant webpage for you. :)

Kerrywood

[patdrenten]

I've discovered from researching the Plumer family that some of the entries in the IGI submitted by members that the information was a guess as I found a book in the Guildhall in London about the British vintners living (temporarily?) in Porto/Oporto Portugal and there were many birth, deaths and marriages in the book of British such as Plumer of London and Sheriff Hutton and other British high-society vintners/wine importers. The information in that book, written contemporaniously, disproves some of the IGI information.

[Guy Etchells]

RIP Hugh Watkins (1939-2009).

The answer to many of the "mysteries" surrounding the IGI are often due to the details of the IGI concept.

For example.
An Extracted record is a record that forms part of a mass extraction of records from one of a number of different sources.
Those sources include -
Private transcripts, Bishop's transcripts, parish registers, third party data sets (i.e. Gibson's Oxford Marriage Index).

Do not be confused into thinking they are all from original registers.

In addition as the IGI indexes the ordinances performed in a LDS Temple information from other sources disproves nothing.
When used for its correct purpose the IGI 100% correct.

It is vital when using any source that the researcher understands the reason for the sources existence otherwise they will be mislead at some point.
Cheers
Guy

[Marie C..]

Glad you asked this question, Pottoka, and there are some interesting answers but what can one do when there is nothing but a name and date and it says"record submitted after 1991 by a member of the LDS church. No added information. No source of information available". Why not?
There is also a marriage for this same person and same comments.
I want to know who submitted it and where did they get their information, though limited, from?
This is my 4x great grandfather and since there is absolutely nothing anywhere about him apart from his name on his daughters marriage cert in 1843 and nothing at all on his wife I see this IGI entry as my only hope.
Marie

[pottoka]

I wonder what the record actually says about your great-great-great-great-grandfather, Marie.

There are records about my great-great-great-grandfather on the IGI which are member-submitted, although presumably before 1991 which seems to be some sort of cut-off date. It says "Record submitted by a member of the LDS Church. The record often shows the name of the individual and his or her relationship to a descendant, shown as the heir, family representative, or relative. The original records are not indexed, and you may have to look at the film frame-by-frame to find the information you want."

I have in mind that there was once an address for someone in Canada on these records because I wondered about writing to them; I remembered that my grandmother had mentioned cousins who moved to Canada so presumed it was them.

The thing about these records is that there is a grain of truth in them: the date of death (although it is actually the date of burial) of a man of the name of my ancestor (who is probably him). As he died in 1835, the PR gave his age, so the submitter has calculated his probable year of birth and put "about 1767". The name of his wife and marriage date are correct.

Where his birth place came from is a total mystery. It has got on to Ancestry and OneWorldTree and been copied on to public trees whence it has been copied again, yet I have trawled through the PRs of that village more than once (to be ultra-sure), and no-one with that surname was born there around that date. The man was married and died in the same village (a different one), and one of that name was baptised there in 1767 and another (they were cousins) in 1768.

Another entry on the IGI, also member-submitted, claims that this same ancestor, who married my great-great-great-grandmother when he was 47 and she 30, was previously married to Ann. No date, no maiden name, no place of marriage, just Ann. Various trees on Ancestry have them having a bunch of children. Maybe it's logical that he would marry earlier than 47, but his cousin never married, so maybe they couldn't afford to, they had a pact not to, they didn't really like women, they were bad-tempered, cantankerous old so-and-sos that no woman from the village would have - who knows? (the wife came not only from another village, but also another county!) But if he did marry Ann and have 10 or so kids, why did he move away from his village and where's the proof? And where's the proof of all these kids and what happened to them?

I believe that some member-submitted entries are simply wishful thinking.

[Marie C..]

Well Pottoka at least with yours there is some other mention of your g g g grandfather in other trees. So he did exist. There is simply no mention of mine or his wife anywhere. The only person interested in my Gumm is in Australia and he only has the info I gave him.

You can see him on fam search. Thomas Gumm born "about 1782."
There is a marriage for him to Johannah about 1807. Johannah who? She must be a figment of the member of the LDS submitter's imagination. She wasn't born and she certainly didn't die but she bore half a dozen children(found on Kingston baptisms) and yet not one daughter or grandaughter was named Johannah!
Thomas and Johannah were supposedly born in Ham. Of her children, one married and went to Adelade in 1839, one married, bore many children and lived and died in Ham, my gr gr gran married an army chap and had one son only( and he married a second cousin and they had my grandfather. Gr. gr. gran's twin died and two others Edward and Dinah just vanished into the ether.
I e mailed LDS but got no answer. Surrey Hist. centre couldn't find my Thomas Gumm and
if he was alive and a farmer in Ham (daughter's marriage cert1843) why isn't he on the 1841 census somewhere?
Who plucked his name out of where and popped it on the LDS site and why is there "no further information"?
How can they put names there without having a clue where they came from?
I wonder if Hugh(Wallis) knows why they do this?
Somewhere there are parish records for Ham before 1813 but I can't find them.
So you have my sympathy!
Marie

[pottoka]

Well Pottoka at least with yours there is some other mention of your g g g grandfather in other trees. So he did exist. There is simply no mention of mine or his wife anywhere. The only person interested in my Gumm is in Australia and he only has the info I gave him.



But I honestly believe that I am the only person with him on my tree who is actually a descendant of his. The others are body snatchers and name thieves. |nutkick|

Methinx I should be offering you my sympathy.

[pottoka]

Have you tried the site curiousfox.com?

I've just looked up Ham in Surrey, and there are two entries about the Gumms of Ham on it, one from August 2006 and one from February 2008. Of course, it might be you who has posted them, but the earlier one says that Dinah went to the U.S., and you say that you don't know what happened to her.

Does findmypast have any parish records? I found some burials of ancestors in Lincolnshire which allowed me to "close" their lives and even to prove the existence of a wife who was neither born, baptised nor married! However, I think that some counties are much better covered than others. I had no luck with any of my Lancashire relatives.

Can Surrey Records Office not help you to find the PRs for Ham?

[Marie C..]

Hi Pottoka,
Yes, both entries on curious fox are mine. Thanks. Any" Gumms from Ham" enquiries anywhere are probably mine.
I did think at one time Dinah went to US.... just clutching at straws! No idea now why I thought that....
Marie

[pottoka]

Hi Pottoka,
Yes, both entries on curious fox are mine. Thanks. Any" Gumms from Ham" enquiries anywhere are probably mine.
I did think at one time Dinah went to US.... just clutching at straws! No idea now why I thought that....
Marie

Curses, I thought I might be on to something there. |rant|

[JAP1]

Hi Marie C..,

Some random thoughts ...

1. A Thomas GUM(M) & Johanna(h) certainly did exist given that there are extracted entries for births/baptisms of children to them, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey - Edward 1810, Mary Ann 1812, Elizabeth 1815, Isaac & Rebecca 1817 (Isaac d 1819), and Dinah 1821.

2. Have you viewed the LDS films of the sources of these records?
Clicking on the IGI Source Call Numbers for the births/baptisms shows that, for Edward, Isaac & Rebecca, and Dinah, they are the Bishop's Transcripts for the Parish Church of Kingston upon Thames.
And for Mary Ann and Elizabeth, they are the Parish Registers for the Parish Church of Kingston upon Thames.
If you have not viewed these primary sources it would seem to be worth doing so as there might be some clues about Thomas's occupation and location in them.

3. The film notes for both of these sources indicate that they include burials. It would seem to be worth checking through these - they might even reveal when Thomas and/or Johannah passed away, and perhaps even the fates of Edward and Dinah. Perhaps all of these might have died before the 1841 census.
I note that the church in Ham (St Andrews) did not open until 1832; there are records of burials from 1838.
And (a bit confusing, this) the East Surrey FHS advertises a CD of MIs at St Andrews from 1720 ...

4. Some submitted records are based on careful research; others - such as the ones you are referring to - are not worth the paper they are written on.
As a rule of thumb, I always ignore submitted records which state About (date), Of (location).
Usually all this means is that the submitter first heard of the people concerned at that location, and that the submitter has applied a guesswork formula for dates.
So .... Thomas & Johannah were first heard of in births/baptisms in the parish records of Kingston upon Thames - and perhaps those records actually mention Ham. That's why the submissions say "Of Ham". But, of course, it might be that neither Thomas nor Johannah was born or married in Ham, or even in Surrey!
The submitter then guesses at a marriage 2 or 3 years before the birth of the first child (not based on any record).
And guesses at a birth date of ca 25 years before the estimated marriage date for the male, and ca 20 years before the estimated marriage date for the female (again not based on any records).
So these guesses at birth dates and places might well bear no relation at all to the actual birth dates and places.
And - unfortunately - there might be no records to be found of the births/baptisms and/or the marriage of Thomas & Johannah.

5. The absence of the word 'deceased' against the father on a marriage certificate is no guarantee that he was alive at the time of the marriage.
Have you looked at the parish registers for Isleworth i.e. at the 1833 marriage of Elizabeth GUMM to John Charles ABBOTT, and the 1835 marriage of Mary Ann GUMM to James NEW?
Just in case there are any clues e.g. any names of witnesses ...

Finally, if you've already done all of this including searching through all the relevant parish records, I apologise - |blush|- for the repetition!

Best of luck,

JAP

[Marie C..]

Dear JAP,
(Thanks Pottoka!for your sympathy and the loan of your thread)
Bless you!
Yes I have all that info. I even have a marriage for Thomas and johanna at Walton on Thames 1807.
I have the info on the film details BUt I cannot view it as nearest fam his centre is 40 miles away from me and the busses don't connect.
One or two things you have mentioned Jap have given me some new ideas. I will get back when I have explored them.
Many many thanks.
Marie