06 October 2012

More Down Home Places Ancestry.com's Never Heard Of

Sometimes I just think Ancestry.com's not all that worried about those of us with ancestors who lived in rural America. They just cannot seem to include some place names in their database. I realize the places I'm discussing are not metropolitan in nature, but it would be nice to be included.

Ancestry.com contained no entry for Altona, Knox County, Illinois as of 6 October 2012--yet it clearly exists.
Apparently there are two additional places that Ancestry.com has never heard of:
  • Altona, Knox County, Illinois
  • Walnut Grove Township, Knox County, Illinois
Neither of these locations come up on the drop down menu when searching at Ancestry.com and yet they appear in the 1940 Census database as extracted locations. This is the latest in a series of omissions of locations in Ancestry.com's database of places and frankly I can't understand. Like the others that have been mentioned earlier, these are known places. 

And the problem I have with this is that, we rely on Ancestry.com to be accurate. When there are omissions that can clearly be found, it makes one wonder what other things might be missing.

Ancestry.com's list of locations showed no entry for Walnut Grove Township, Knox County, Illinois as of 6 October 2012.
Sometimes it really feels like I'm the only one who really is bothered by the lack of a set of complete place names in the Ancestry.com database.

There's still no Prairie Township listed in Hancock County, Illinois, either:

No Prairie Township, Hancock County, Illinois, shown on Ancestry.com's list of locations as of 6 October 2012.

This little 'ol blog probably doesn't warrant enough traffic to really attract attention to the issue although I did communicate with Ancestry.com staffers about it a year or so ago, but apparently this problem just does not warrant any concern on the part of Ancestry.com. 

Oh, yeah. West Point, Hancock County, Illinois, and Basco, Hancock County, Illinois, don't appear in the list of locations either. But I won't bore readers with more images. 




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For the record, I'm not an Ancestry subscriber. But from my experience with the FREE 1940 census they leave much to be desired. The transcriptions are terrible -- names of persons and of places. In one of my comments, I suggested they buy an atlas!