Possible parish record transcription error (General)

by mrsbruso , Friday, September 30, 2011, 13:41 (4807 days ago) @ essjay

Keep in mind this might not be a transcription error. Spellings weren't standardized in days past . . . if you check John "Playster"'s father's name in 1713, and his other children's births, you will see that "Daniel" was spelt/spelled three different ways.

Assuming the 1713 baptism is for your John, then he should be 46 and not 64 at the time of his death. Does one or the other of those tie in with his marriage? (I haven't checked. Who were the witnesses at his marriage? Does this help confirm the baptismal info?)

The stone cutters could easily have made a transcription error as well, and simply reversed the two numbers. There doesn't appear to be a birth for a John Plaisted in the date range that would make him 64 in 1759.

While it might be nice to solve the date question, it's possible the vicar or clerk could have recorded the date of death, rather than the burial. It is possible someone simply had the date wrong. Any one of those recorded dates could have been slightly off for any number of reasons.

These things are subject to error. On my father's death record with an official government agency, it shows his place of death as Los Angles, California. He visited California once in his life, forty years before his death, for a few days, and yet, there it is all nicely recorded for posterity. They could not have been much more wrong in location and remained in the continental U.S.