Manuscript Registers with Suspiciously Long Date Spans

 

24 May 2014

Among the county level records of Cayuga County, New York (for example), we find a volume labeled "Homestead Exemptions, 1851-1966."

One hundred and fifteen years is an inordinately long span of years for one record book at the county level. In citing volumes such as this, if we were to merely copy the dates as written, odds are that we (or someone else who uses our research) would later suspect a copying error.

We can prevent future second-guessing by flagging unusual situations of this type. Two easy approaches are these:

  1. Put quotation marks around the exact title of the volume; or
  2. Add to the citation a note that calls attention to the unusual dating. For example:

Cayuga County, New York, Homestead Exemptions, 1851-1966 [1 volume], p. 75, for David Whipple, 26 February 1904; Cayuga County Records Retention Center, Auburn.

When working with records from the 1600s and 1700s, unusual situations of this type may also be a clue to the fact that original books have been recopied into larger ledgers. That not only introduces the possibility of not copying errors, but also might mask a loss of pages or blocks of the original records. In these cases we would want to scan the derivative volume, page by page, for the chronology of the records, to ensure that no date spans are missing.

(Adapted from EE 10.24, "Homestead Exemption Records")


IMAGE SOURCE: Barnstable, Barnstable County, Massachusetts, Town Records, Vol. 2, 1713–1774 [1895 transcription], clerical notation inside front cover; consulted as "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1627-2001," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1961-31538-507-18?cc=2061550&wc=MX1K-538:353349701,353366701,1005976002 : accessed 15 May 2014), Barnstable > Barnstable > Town records 1640-1774 vol 1-2 > image 292 of 663.