I think that was a global search-and-replace gone horribly wrong at the index level. Same with “, NL” being replaced by Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Users were not presented with the new names and asked if they wanted to accept it if they chose batch mode, the program just changed all the instances automatically. At least, that is what Family Tree Maker used to do.
The problem with Reusel-De Mierden is that it is the software that automatically replaced all references to ‘Holland’ with ‘Reusel-De Mierden, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands’ if you chose to geocode the place names.
But Ancestry (and MyHeritage as they have also partnered with FamilySearch), should they check and correct the data? I think they (and again, also the users) should inform FamilySearch, so the source gets corrected, all parties using these datasets then also get corrected data.įinally, I’d like to repeat what Irma says: researches, always check and double check information you find and use, be it from an archive or library, offline or online publication. You can blame FamilySearch, as their dataset contains these (rather easy to spot!) errors. The ‘Burgerlijke Stand’ issue has another dimension to it. The hint might be incorrect because the software uses an incomplete geographical dataset, I hope users will help getting these datasets complete, for example via the Wikipedia like. The software functionality here is not to blame, it’s not in error. But in the case of the hints, it’s the user that pushes the acknowledge button without checking / correcting the data. If software automatically changes your data, than you would have a point. It’s not software (errors) that corrupt trees, it’s the user! The infographic is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license, which means you may copy and redistribute the infographic in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give me the credits and don’t change the image.
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You won’t be alone, I promise! Embed the infographic on your own siteįeel free to share the infographic on your own blog, website or social media profile. Please leave a comment below if you find any. I advise you all to take a moment to check your trees for any of these errors. A place name as specific as ‘Reusel-De Mierden, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands’ doesn’t appear like somebody made it up… Check your trees! It’s easy to see how people would be tempted to replace a generic place of origin like ‘Holland’ by the specific town in Noord-Brabant where the immigrant ancestor came from. But the friendly way in which Ancestry lets you accept hints from other trees probably caused these errors to spread fast once an error made its way to a Member Tree. This isn’t meant to imply that the errors originated with. I chose to check Ancestry Member Trees because that is the largest collection of family trees that I know of. But this record set has only been online at since earlier this week so unfortunately this error has some serious potential for growth. I found about 2,300 people with birth places with ‘Burgerlijke stand’ in it so far. The error that has had the least impact so far, is the one where ‘Burgerlijke Stand’ (Civil Registration) is included in the place name in the index and found its way to member trees from there. These errors are pretty obvious, since the place name will say something like “Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.” I searched for the names of all Dutch provinces with Newfoundland behind it and found over 100,000 incorrect profiles. That is remarkable for a tiny municipality that has only existed since 1997! I estimate that at least 900,000 of these records should say “Holland” instead of Reusel.Īnother error causes Dutch place names that had “NL” to be resolved to “Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada” instead of “Netherlands”. I found almost 1 million records for people who lived in Reusel-De Mierden, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands in Ancestry Member Trees, many going back to the 16th or 17th century.
But this isn’t the biggest error caused by software.
People were especially appalled by the error that caused ‘Burgerlijke Stand’ (Civil Registration) to be included in the place name. The article I wrote about major problems with new Dutch records on sparked some great discussions both here and on several Facebook groups.