Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Ancestry Can Be Quick to Fix an Error

Michael John Neill at RootDig wrote a post entitled, Ancestry.com - There is More To Illinois than Cook County

Ancestry's Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index (1916-1947) provided the following source information:

Ancestry.com. Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.Original data: "Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916–1947." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2010. Illinois Department of Health records. "Certificates of Death." Division of Vital Records, Springfield, Illinois.
But the description indicated that the records were extracted from the Cook County records.  This wasn't accurate as there were records in the database from all over Illinois. I use the past tense, as while his post was this morning, and he has a screen print of a record, someone from Ancestry must have read his post, because they have already corrected the error.

Below is an image of my Great Great Uncle, Max Newmark's record copied a few minutes ago:
No longer does the description indicate that it is only Cook County Records.  Which is a good thing, as my great great uncle died in East St. Louis, Illinois - a fair distance from Chicago/Cook County.

Something else I'll note -- this is another good example of the issues with record transcriptions without accompanying images.  While the transcription comes originally from FamilySearch, they too don't have the image.  Though with the microfilm number, I can obtain a copy if I wish.

Max's wife's name should be Dora, not Iona.
The cemetery's name is B'nai Amoona, not Bnar Amoona.
I'm sure the informant said he was born in England, even though I'm pretty certain that isn't the case. The Newmark family moved to England shortly after his birth.

I transcribed the newspaper account of his death back in February of 2010.

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