Another amusing location error generated by auto-complete: "New England, Hettinger, North Dakota"

Question

New England, North Dakota, is a city in Hettinger County. According to Wikipedia, it was founded in 1887 and was first settled largely by people who came from New England places like Massachusetts and Vermont. And WikiTreers have documented people who lived and died there, for example, those buried in the German Lutheran Cemetery there.

But I've stumbled upon a number of profiles for people who supposedly had life events in "New England, Hettinger, North Dakota" in years like 1668 and 1711. These are surely attributable to auto-complete errors in genealogy software, similar to the way that software has put people in Y, Somme, Picardy; Church, Wetzel, West Virginia; Young, Texas; and other locations where they assuredly never lived.

If we see this location on life events that occurred earlier than about 1880, we can be reasonably sure that someone entered the general term "New England" into their software and auto-complete efficiently took care of the rest.

Comments

I would like to just use "Planet Earth" unless somebody can prove a Martian descent LOL

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I don't know about Martian, but I am a 100% verified alien! 

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(Please note, no fat belly hanging below the book.  Alien buddy is completely decent!)

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I been doing Holocaust profiles. Every 18 months the people lived in a different country but never left the family farm.

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So glad you are active again, Eddie.

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Hi Miss Ellen. Only making Holocaust Project profiles with Gaile Connolly. No controversies or arguments. Studiously avoiding that. Declining all requests from other projects. Too much arguing on mama's baby papa's maybe and who is mama papa.

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When they changed countries (which I thought was midnight on alternate Thursdays), they also changed names and languages and where vital records were recorded, as well as if they were even allowed to be recorded.  You'll find families where mama, papa, and all the kids were born in the same place, but each birth record shows a different country … and in a different language.  Also, when marriages were not legally recognized for Jews, you'll see some kids with mother's LNAB, then for a few years, kids will have father's LNAB, then maybe go back to mother's.  Also, father's LNAB that kids got was sometimes HIS mother's LNAB instead of his father's.  I have seen as many as 6 different countries, with 4 different languages, and 4 different LNABs for siblings all born in the same place.  It takes someone of Eddie's caliber to be able to figure out who belongs in what family!!!

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Melanie, I am oh-so-relieved that your Martian friend is observing the Earth dress code!

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Little Fat Belly has been sent home. 

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The same thing happens with "Shenandoah." "Shenandoah Valley" is a region in Virginia, but there is also a "Shenandoah County," and town of "Shenandoah" (in Page County),in Virginia and places named Shenandoah"" in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa. I have seen some strange combinations on other genealogy sites but not on Wiki (not to say it cannot happen).

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It happens in WikiTree because people have imported their data from other websites and from their genealogy software.

I found another one: People whose families lived in places like Germany having life events in An, Rakhine State, Myanmar, for no apparent reason.

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If the location list in the familysearch provided picker don't create enough problems, we have our own home grown ones.  I entered Siberia in a profile and it gets flagged as an error - data doctors want to change it to Liberia.

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Go to the Data Doctors thread and tell Ales that Siberia needs to be accepted as a valid location name. I suppose he may be wanting you to figure out what nation Siberia was part of at the time of the event...

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No good, Ellen - the first time I mentioned it here, he replied that he intends to leave all errors he programmed that are 1 letter different from a place that has been used more often.

Answer 1

Auto complete is like auto correct. Sometime it says things I don't nintendo.

Comments

Anonymous, you were logged out when you posted this. You ought to log in and claim this post as yours.