difference between familysearch and ancestry

Question

I found my ancestor in 1940 census from Familysearch but cant find them through ancestry. What is the difference?

his name is Leonard Borthwick Scutt and wife is Grace J Reed. in 1940 census he is listed as Lenard Scott

Answer 1

It depends on who did the transcription and their interpretation of the handwriting of the enumerator. I've seen names spelled differently, both transcribed from the same sheet of paper. And I've interpreted the handwriting differently from BOTH of them as well!

Comments

Exactly! Sometimes you can find the record by searching for another individual in the household.

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Is there not someway to have the transcription corrected?  Like a contact at Ancestry that reviews are requests and corrects them.

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Natalie and Kay are both correct. A lot depends on who ancestry.com or myheritage have outsourced there transcription service to. I spent a lot of time trying to find a relative named Spencer, only to eventually discover that his name had been transcribed to “Spamer”!

This also highlights why you shouldn’t just accept a matching “hint” with these services before you’ve actually read the hint they are suggesting. I read everything before accepting any of their suggestions, in order to prevent any potential errors.

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im currently looking for an edward freese and in 1930, there are 2 different edwards  living 2 houses apart that are 1 year apart in age!!

Answer 2

I found my ancestor in the 1850 census for Washington county, Virginia easily in Ancestry, but had to look up the specific page to figure out they were transcribed incorrectly in FamilySearch.

Transcribed as Necessary by Ancestry.com and as Neupary by FamilySearch.com

Answer 3

thanks for your responses, i have tried every combination and cant find it in ancestry.

Comments

Leonard Saett

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?ti=0&indiv=try&db=1940usfedcen&h=9267646

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you found it! thank you, one spelling i never thought of

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I didn't search based on spelling, since you already had the same source from FamilySearch... I searched for the 1940 Census for Greene county, Greenville township in New York, page 9B (as indicated by your FamilySearch source).

As Natalie says, you never know how the handwriting will be transcribed.

Ancestry has links to be able to submit corrections to faulty transcriptions.

FamilySearch does not (that I'm aware of)

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And because Ancestry has links to be able to submit corrections to faulty transcriptions. you need to exercise some caution....since family tree errors can creep into the transcriptions.

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no worse than the existing transcription errors.

if you don't have an Ancestry account, then perhaps you haven't seen how the corrections are presented -- the original transcription is still present, with the additional correction(s) submitted by users with explanations for the corrections.