I don’t know who gets their database from whom, but the coincidence is strange.1790-ancestrycom-misc

Both FamilySearch and Ancestry.com have rendered one of the hundreds in Baltimore County, Maryland as “Misc Run Hundred.” It must have been an odd collection of individuals from a wide variety of locations who simply just did not fit in anywhere else.

That seems like a really odd coincidence  that both sites transcribed the name of this location in the same incorrect way. But I suppose that anything is possible.

What I am going to say is that researchers need to consider the possibility that some websites license the use of their indexes to other sites. Researchers may be using different websites and accessing the same index.

Because there is no “Misc” Run Hundred in Baltimore County, Maryland. A look at the actual census image confirmed what I suspected: the actual reference was to Mine River Hundred. Of course, I’m not even going to bother using “Misc Run Hundred” on my citation to this census. Why? Because the index entry lead me to an image of the census page, complete with page numbers. That’s what I need to create my citation to the census page for Thomas Galloway–census year, county, hundred (the smaller political jurisdiction in this case), page number, person of interest and the fact that I accessed the images digitally at FamilySearch  from National Archives microfilm. Unless the index entry is all I have, I rarely use the index to create my citation.

Both sites appear to indicate that they created their own index. All I know is what the index entry says and the suggestions 1790-fhlcom-misceach site give to citing the individual record. Of course, I’m not going to cite their database result. I’m going to cite the image of the census instead of the index entry.

At the bottom of this post is the heading from the census page. I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions on whether or not it’s Mine River Hundred of Misc. Run.

Always look at the original.

Always.

Unless you are looking for miscellaneous ancestors. Then you can look in miscellaneous places.

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4 Responses

  1. The 1790 census records for Maryland were collected into two volumes. The first volume appended most of the districts (“Hundreds”) of Baltimore County together without noting when one ended and the next began on pages 123-232. This grouping is tagged as “Patapsco Lower Hundred” by the FHL when they created the digital database and images that are available online. The combined districts, in order, were Patapsco Lower, Middle River, Lower Back River, Lower Patapsco, Upper Middlesex, Soldiers Delight, North, Gunpowder Middle River, and Upper Hundreds. If you scan through the whole record (60 pages), you can see by the name sequence (some hundreds were alphabetized, some weren’t) that it is several appended lists.

    The records for Mine Run Hundred were bound in volume 2. As noted above, it was tagged as “Misc Run Hundred” either as a typo or because volume 2 had the lists for miscellaneous hundreds that didn’t fit in volume 1.

    In the end, Mr. Neil is spot on. You must look at the original record and ask basic questions before citing records.

  2. I found a census record listed as Misc Run and “paged” back to page 1 or the town. To me it looks like it does read Mine Run

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