ROOTS & BRANCHES

One of my current genealogy lecture offerings is titled “Online German Church Registers, Duplicates and Substitutes.”

The presentation is equal parts giving a rundown the burgeoning number of German church records that can be found on the internet and delineating the different iterations of those records and why that matters.

It’s that latter delineation—which applies to any sort of genealogy document—that I want to reflect upon in this “Roots & Branches” column because I recently was face to face with a case in which it mattered a lot to go after the original.

I was looking at tax lists in a county courthouse archives and was directed to look at them on microfiche.

The archivist helping me was honest that the microfiche were not particularly easy to use, including problems of legibility in some cases; he said that researchers are directed to the fiche to prevent further wear and tear on the original bound tax volumes but that he would bring those volumes out for use if I had a need for them.

Well, I found the subject of my search and in the microfiche version looked as if his name has been written in after the list was originally compiled. It also looked as if his valuation and tax was put with another man of the same surname at the bottom of the page. What didn’t make sense, though, is that the valuation and tax didn’t seem to match what was listed right under my subject’s name.

So, I called for the original volume and was certainly glad I did.

Turns out, the subject of my search was not only written in later—his information was insert on a “flap” pasted into the original! And on the back of the “flap” were his true valuation and tax amounts (what I thought had belonged to him were for the taxpayer whose name appeared above my subject’s.

And when I saw the “flap information, it matched what was added at the bottom of the page.

Now, in many cases when microforms are created, those responsible for the reproductions make sure to look for such “flaps” and when they are found, separate images are created to make sure the “flap” information is retained.

But it isn’t difficult for such data to be lost to history, especially with digital conversions that ordinarily to not go back to digitize originals but rather take advantage of today’s fast microfilm-to-digital transfer technology.

The moral of the story is that if an original is accessible, you ought to take a look at it. In the vast majority of cases, a microform or digital image will be a faithful reproduction of that original.

But even that tiny minority of images that aren’t faithful reproductions may hide an ancestor!