Place names – not all plain sailing!   Were they really born there?

A census entry is only as good as the person who gave the information.  Did they really want officialdom to know all their secrets.  Nowadays with the many transcripts, a census is  only as good as the original information and now who transcribed those historical details for online companies.

For example, say a John Riach is found on a family tree sent by a distant relative.  John is a relative you have been missing but have now found thanks to your newly supplied information but all you have been given about John is his birth year as he is from a distant branch of your family.

Where do you then go looking?  If you are in the the highlands of Scotland you would go to Dallas, Morayshire but if you are in America, would you probably look in Dallas, Texas records – you could be looking in the wrong country.

A few other place names that may send you off in the wrong direction :-

Scottish place names – Dallas, Aberdeen, Dunoon, Balmoral, Blairgowrie, Oban, Elgin, Glasgow, Inverness.

English place names – Hollywood, Liverpool, Windsor, Richmond, Newcastle, Exeter, Glossop, Spalding, Hastings, Worthing, Brighton, Crofton, Manchester, Brighton, Carlisle, Durham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Hull and the list goes on.

Welsh place names – Bangor, Cardiff, Welshpool, Caernarvon, Swansea, Haverford, Abergavenny, Ebbw Vale.

Irish place names – Erin, Munster, Ulster, Antrim, Armagh, Fermoy, Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Roscommon, Derry.

The moral of this tale is don’t always trust place names included in a family tree on an online website.  Don’t always trust other people’s research.  Check where you can, and make a note that the research is not yours, if using information from another source.

On the up side, by looking in other countries, such as America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, you may come up with the information you have been searching for.