[minor editing of this post at 12:15 PM central on 25 November]
Decimals matter. If you're not certain, ask your bank. They mattered to your ancestor too, especially if he bought and sold real estate.
The first screen shot in this blog post is of the results page for Clark Sargent's entry in the Illinois, Public Land Purchase Records, 1800-1990 database at Ancestry.com.
I thought that the price, total [paid], and acreage looked a little strange. First of all the price [per acre] and the acreage do not compute with the stated acreage of 4000 acres. It's also true that 4000 acres would encompass more than one section in a given Winnebago County township [sections are usually 640 acres]. Something is not right with these numbers.
This is a database that Ancestry.com pulled from another source--which is fine. The State of Illinois (actually the Illinois State Archives) maintains the website on which the state version of the database is maintained. Ancestry.com's "Source Information" is shown below.
Searching for Clark on the Illinois State Archives website's version of the database (titled: Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales) confirmed what I expected: the numbers on Ancestry.com were wrong.
There are decimals in the numbers that appeared to be "off." The acreage is 40.00 acres, the price is $1.25 an acre and the total price is $50.00. Those numbers all make more sense than the ones at Ancestry.com.
I guessed that this error did not just happen for Clark. I was right--the search results page at Ancestry.com's database showed the following for another person of interest: Andrew Trask.
Sure enough, those entries had the missing decimals in price, total, and acreage.
I use this database on the Illinois State Archives website regularly and rarely use it at Ancestry.com. Otherwise I might have noticed it easier.
Lessons:
- Look at the original.
- Never assume an index is correct.
- Check the numbers to see if they "make sense."
Errors like this actually concern me on several levels. If something as simple as decimals can't be transferred over correctly, what else might be a little "off?"
All these search results screens are accurate as of 25 November 2012--1:00 AM CST.
6 comments:
Wow - This is something I never would have considered that could be wrong. I SEEMS like it should be simply to bring over. Thanks so much for pointing this out - it always pays to "do the math"!!
I was surprised too. This seems like it would be an easy transfer, but maybe I'm wrong. Numbers don't lie ;-)
I always wonder, who writes the code to input stuff on Ancestry. Too many of these errors. Must be someone who has NO idea what the data bases are supposed to contain and how they are supposed to read. I have also seen several examples of the data bases "morfing" the information over time and just do NOT understand that one. The Michigan Death Index 1971 to 1996 has become so corrupt it is unbelievable. They now have death dates that are before the birth dates (or at least the last time I looked at one that was how it was, sighhhh).
Example, no need to publish unless you want to:
Name Birth Date Death Date Gender Residence
Arthur Stevens 18 Feb 1903 7 Apr 1988 Male Harrison, Macomb, Michigan
Arthur A. Stevens 9 Apr 1909 4 May 1994 Male Wayne, Wayne, Michigan
Arthur R Stevens 10 Sep 1914 14 Nov 1989 Male Sanford, Midland, Michigan
Kenneth Arthur Stevens 19 Oct 1915 5 Jun 1996 Male Clay Banks, Oceana, Michigan
Arthur M Stevens 6 Oct 1918 6 Oct 1984 Male Montague, Muskegon, Michigan
Arthur N Stevens 1 Jul 1919 13 Apr 1979 Male Allen Park City, Wayne, Michigan
Arthur P Stevens 27 Apr 1923 8 Oct 1976 Male Indiana
Arthur A Stevens 1978 00
Arthur I Stevens 24 Nov 1983 21 Mar 1971 Male Michigan
Arthur C Stevens 25 Aug 1996 14 Jul 1972 Male Milan, Washtenaw, Michigan
Arthur Stevens 21 Apr 1996 22 Jul 1973 Male Benton, Berrien, Michigan
Arthur D Stevens Jr 24 Oct 1937 25 Dec 1987 Male Bay City, Bay, Michigan
(I wish I had saved some previous searches that I could remember. I have done searches and found correct death dates and later repeated the search, for some reason, and found this death date mess up. If I could just remember. LOL)
I hope you reported this to Ancestry.com Support.
By the way, I think you mean "do not compute" in the third paragraph.
Keith-
Thanks for catching my typo-it's been fixed.
I've reported the error to Ancestry.com and am waiting for a response.
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