14 November 2012

New and updated British electoral registers at Ancestry

Ancestry has made another major addition to its collection of voters lists with England, Midlands Electoral Registers, 1832-1955. It has more than 6.2 million entries for Birmingham and North Warwickshire.
The indexing was done by an automated process. It's not to be trusted except to point you to an original image to examine.
In particular don't trust addresses. I found the classically inclined Plato Jenkins, who lived on Springfield Road from 1920 to 1955 indexed as on Tennis Court in 1920, St Agnes Road in 1925, Hannah--J in 1927, Annie in 1935, Tenby in 1945, School House in 1950 and Tolwyn Street in 1955. All the time the family never moving from Springfield Road.
I also found addresses indexed as names.
Such errors are inevitable with automated indexing. Errors are always inevitable; I'd rather have these than nothing at all.
Ancestry have also updated their electoral register collection for London 1832-1965 originally posted in January. I found entries for my family for later years than previously. There's also an update to the electoral register collection for Dorset 1839-1922.

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