09 August 2011

Weird Stuff On the FamilySearch Site

I was doing a little searching into on Iowa resident Gideon Town for Casefile Clues and came across some interesting things on FamilySearch.



There are three marriage results for Gideon. The bottom two are both from Iowa marriages for 1809-1992 and the duplicates within one database are not uncommon. What is strange is the reference in Marion County, Ohio.

Expanding the Ohio entry reveals additional information:
It claims these are Ohio records.

Searching the FamilySearch Library card catalog for source film 1019714 brought up the following screen:


This clearly indicates the marriage records are Marion County, Iowa and not Ohio records.

I'm not certain what brought about the error.

But now it has me wondering about how I use locations in FamilySearch.

The Iowa marriage references in the original screen shot are from actual Iowa records as well.

Gideon was in Iowa from 1856 until at least 1910.

What's the real answer? I'm not certain to be honest. I was only researching Gideon for a Casefile Clues article where he's really a "side" interest. The varying locations for the marriage caught my attention and I decided to search into them a little further.

The date of marriage on all three entries is the same.