Happy 2016! I’m starting the new year with a genealogy do-over. Since I had to migrate from Family Tree Maker to Legacy Family Tree, and since my sources and notes didn’t transfer as cleanly as I would have liked, I decided this was a good time to start over from scratch.
1930 United States Federal Census, entry for Louis C. Couvrette
I am forever grateful to the folks who transcribe old records. Without them, searching for genealogical information would be a nightmare. However, sometimes I have to wonder what they’re smoking. The above transcription at Ancestry.com indicates that Louis Charles was an assistant preacher at a theatre. Does that make even a tiny bit of sense? No. No, it does not. Treasurer assistant makes much more sense, yes?
The scan of the original census page at Ancestry.com is really light and difficult to read, so I understand why the transcriber had trouble. Luckily for us researchers, though, all of the big repositories have made their own individual US census scans, so we aren’t stuck with the crappy scan available at Ancestry.com. I checked Family Search and Find My Past. Family Search had the best of the three, so that’s the one I used here for my illustration.
Lesson 1: Don’t trust transcriptions. They are several times removed from reality.
Lesson 2: If the US census scan provided by the repository you’re searching is illegible, try a different repository.
red paper boat 
The “don’t trust” advice is good all-around. I was recently looking at my great-uncles first marriage. The information I had was supplied by a trusted genealogist and I assumed it was correct. Her information came from the 1920 census and matched what was known about my ancestor at the time, but when I looked at 1930, I found she had selected the wrong census record and mistakenly linked two daughters to the family. Better to verify everything
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How annoying, especially since it came from someone who should have known better.
There is so much total nonsense out there, it’s mind-boggling. It’s hard enough evaluating original documents, but then when you rely on other people’s skill at evaluating those sources, you can easily wander into fairytale territory.
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