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Ancestry's "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935"

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AdrianBruce
Posts: 360
Joined: 14 Jun 2020, 18:57
Location: South Cheshire

Ancestry's "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935"

Post by AdrianBruce »

Ancestry have recently loaded "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935". Unfortunately there are issues with this collection.

Firstly I failed to find my 3G-GF, John Bruce, d 29 Aug 1875 (DC from GROS). I'd been told he was buried in Warriston so I searched on name and death year 1875 +/- 1y. Nope. Eventually I found him by searching that collection on name and approximate birth date only. Turns out that his death date in the Ancestry index had no year, so no wonder my search for 1875 didn't find him. If anyone wants to ask why Ancestry didn't link the query on death date to the date of burial, that being a likely item of data in cemetery data, well, join the queue. Or why they couldn't work out by reading the top of the page that the year was 1875.... :(

When I did find him, the image of the original page reads "Warriston", the index record correctly reads "Warriston", but the title at the top of the page reads "Calton, 1841-1887". Calton is not Warriston. The problem is that the title at the top of the page is what you use if you want to browse the data. If you try to go to browse Warriston, you get a set of 838 images of pages of registers from - I think - South Leith Churchyard. There's no title on the original pages in this instance and evidence for South Leith comes from some unusual plot names that led me to FindAGrave. That has a burial in South Leith Churchyard of a Charles Anderson MD, d 3 Feb 1855. He is in those 838 images on Ancestry found by browsing "Warriston" and his index says Warriston, like the browse. Both are wrong as I assume that FindAGrave is correct with its cemetery name of South Leith.

Another that's wrong: Wikipedia's entry for Calton has a Dr James Begbie (1798-1869) buried New Calton. The Ancestry index and the title that you would use for browsing have him buried Canongate cemetery in Calton parish, but the image says Calton on the original page.

So - don't trust the indexes, read the original page - if it's got the cemetery name. And if you need to browse, don't trust the titles - which makes browsing this collection pretty useless!
Adrian Bruce
Mick Loney
Posts: 373
Joined: 15 Jun 2020, 07:27

Re: Ancestry's "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935"

Post by Mick Loney »

Adrian,
Ancestry indexing is rubbish when it comes to English place names
I searched for a christening of william weaver 1800, Bromsgrove, and selected Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, from their own drop down list, and couldn’t find him. I relaxed the place name to County (i.e. Worcestershire), and there he was, in Bromsgrove, Worcester, England. They obviously don’t know the difference between Worcester and Worcestershire!

I wanted to point this out to them, but there seems to be no easy way to do this, and messages to their old e-mail address support@Ancestry.co.uk, is returned by Ancestry saying the addressee is no longer in use.
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AdrianBruce
Posts: 360
Joined: 14 Jun 2020, 18:57
Location: South Cheshire

Re: Ancestry's "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935"

Post by AdrianBruce »

Mick Loney wrote: 20 Jun 2022, 06:51 ... I relaxed the place name to County (i.e. Worcestershire), and there he was, in Bromsgrove, Worcester, England. They obviously don’t know the difference between Worcester and Worcestershire! ...
Mind you that doesn't make much sense either since you were still entering Worcestershire but finding Worcester....

I have to say that some of this current incompetence is awfully reminiscent of the incompetence of FamilySearch - not just in its level of stupidity but in some of the apparent design practices.

On the other hand, I confess I may not notice some of the flakiness of that type because I tend to search by no closer than county on account of the fact that my relatives might claim they were born in Haslington in one census but end up as being born in Crewe on the next.
Adrian Bruce
Mick Loney
Posts: 373
Joined: 15 Jun 2020, 07:27

Re: Ancestry's "Edinburgh, Scotland, Cemetery Registers, 1771-1935"

Post by Mick Loney »

Bruce,
All I can say in their defence, is that Worcester is in Worcestershire, so that is why Bromsgrove, Worcester came up in the Worcestershire results. At least they got that bit right😀
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