The only constant is change

I am trying to love the new Family History Research Service launched by the Queensland Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages on June 6. After all, I don't want to be labelled a grumpy old man who wants everything to stay just the way it "always" has been. So I am trying, but gee they make it difficult.

Let's begin by acknowledging that the new search facility has brought some wonderful new features. How could anyone complain about immediate access to the full date of an event without the need for fiddly split-half search techniques? And we all appreciate the opportunity to purchase images of the original source documents as an alternative to the register entry (for the same price) with the possible bonus of additional correspondence at no extra charge.

And how about the new global search facility? Well, let's examine that for a moment. I often use our 2xgreat grandfather Thomas Henry Suddaby as a test subject. His name is rare enough that it almost always produces a manageable set of results. Now when I used the "old" search engine, I was limited to a single given name but a search for the birth Suddaby, Thomas produced two records (that for my target and one for his son with similar but not identical given names). Similarly, I located two death records (father and son) and two marriages (one for the target and the other for his daughter marrying a man with the same given name as her father).

With the new improved tool, a simultaneous search across all three datasets for Thomas Suddaby returned 221907 hits. Editing the search term to Thomas Henry Suddaby (additional given names are an added feature of the new service) increased the number to 405391. Does anyone remember when we were advised to "widen your search by entering fewer fields, and less exact information"? Now it seems that the opposite is true.

Fortunately for those appalled by those numbers, in the last few days an enhancement has been made offering the option to "Show only exact matches on names". When that was applied to my search the number of hits dropped to a mere 404932.

Perhaps, the simultaneous search is an unfair comparison. When I limit the new search to one event type at a time (as in the "old" system), it returns 127803 births, 90504 marriages and 186625 deaths. At least, it is consistent.

Of course, the quantity of hits is not the only (or even the most important) criterion of a search procedure. How relevant are the results returned? In each case, at least the first dozen results for each event referred to known members of the family of T H Suddaby and that was true of 58% of the first 50 entries in the aggregated search. But 47 of them were not the records I was searching for!

The new service has achieved this (admittedly impressive) feat of identifying records with an incidental relationship to the actual search being conducted by the introduction of "fuzzy" search algorithms. If I were a novice researcher making my first search with a single isolated name, I might be very excited to be presented with details of more than 20 other related people spread across three generations. As a grizzled veteran looking for a specific piece of information, my response is frustration rather than joy.

Perhaps when I find the switch to turn off, or even to moderate, the "fuzziness" of the search then I will come to love the new service. Grumpy old men will have the tool with which we they are familiar and the beginners will have immediate access to a flood of names and dates to maintain their burgeoning interest.

The page called Searching our historical records—hints and tips will surely explain how to regain some sensible measure of control over the process. Sadly, it does not. On the other hand, it does offer fascinating insights into the use of wildcards and sorting your results. Which is rather depressing because these were important features of the old system that have been disabled (lost|stolen|destroyed depending upon your current level of frustration). Never mind, in a short time, the help page will be cripplededited to correspond to the limitations of the search tool. Then a whole generation of genealogists will grow up not knowing what a price has been paid for the "improvements" we now enjoy.

But I really do not want to be seen as the old codger who pines for "the good old days". A positive response to my predicament would be to see how much of the functionality of the old site I can reconstruct in other tools. Clearly the first step is to copy the results returned from the web page into a spreadsheet for local manipulation.

Did I happen to mention that the format in which results are displayed has also been enhanced within the new service? That old-fashioned tabular presentation has been jettisoned in favour of something that scales nicely on small screen devices. Of course, making the list nice to read on a phone does mean the items cannot be pasted easily into a spreadsheet ...

I am trying to love the new Family History Research Service. I am, really. I don't want to be a whinger. But gee they make it difficult.

Who can I believe?

Thomas Bryce, the son of David Bryce Esq, was at his father's home in Glasgow on Sunday 7 April 1861 (census night)¹. And he was definitely in Brisbane, Queensland on Tuesday 18 September 1866² (the day of his wedding with Janet Menzies). The timing and method by which he was transported between these two points in space-time are less clear.

There is no entry in the QSA Immigration Indices that might plausibly describe his journey. That is not really surprising because the period 1860-67 is almost certainly the one with the least complete coverage of immigration records.

The report of Thomas's death in The Brisbane Courier of 8 January 1912³ is quite definite concerning his entry into Queensland. "He started his career as an accountant in his native city, but left there in 1862 in the ship Golden City, and came to Queensland in search of health." Murphy's Law would have predicted as much because the Golden City is fabled among researchers for its association with missing records. (Can't find your ancestor's arrival in the 1860s, put down "via the Golden City".)

Fortunately, although not recorded at QSA, the 1862-63 voyage of the Golden City was the subject of one of the series of booklets They Came Direct compiled by Eileen Johnson⁴. But that transcription contains no reference to Thomas Bryce, 20-year-old accountant from Glasgow. On the other hand, there is an entry for a 20-year-old Scottish labourer who apparently joined the vessel at Queenstown (the port in Cork, Ireland) named Thomas Boyce. The full transcription of the passenger list also includes a Mrs Boyce and two (unnamed) infant children travelling in the cabin.

Could there be a family connection between these passengers that has nothing to do with "my" Thomas? Or having encountered the name Boyce at the top of the list, were the transcribers predisposed to interpret a later, similar but indistinct name as being the same? If the male passenger was actually Thomas Bryce, why would an accountant travel to Ireland (rather than London) to join the ship and then list his occupation as "labourer".

The Queensland Family History Society has recently completed an extensive project to transcribe passenger lists held by the National Archives for which there is no corresponding Queensland State Archives record. They are published on CD as the Queensland Customs House Shipping lists. And the arrival of the Golden City is included in the volume covering 1852-1885⁵.

That (independent) QFHS transcription includes an entry for Thomas Bryce 20-year-old Scottish labourer who boarded the vessel in London. Clearly, this reading is closer to what I was expecting but the discrepancy concerning his occupation remains. I really have no basis to decide that one or the other is correct, particularly given the conflict over where he boarded the ship.

The original paper record that underpins both transcriptions was held in the Brisbane collection of the National Archives of Australia and formed part of the set of early shipping records in delicate condition transferred to microfilm for ease of public access. But the passage of time saw that base film stock subject to "vinegary decay" and this required a further transfer of the information to a stable format. Roll 1 of Series J715 is now an enormous file of 1327 digital "frames" that can be viewed online⁶. There is no index but the images are arranged approximately in date order of departure from the UK.

The voyage of the Golden City (departing London on 3 December 1862 and then Queenstown on 13 December 1862, arriving in Moreton Bay 5 March 1863) is recorded in frames 314 to 328. On frame 318, can be seen a passenger name B?yce that has apparently been over-written at some point. I cannot determine if a letter "o" has been replaced with an "r" or vice versa. I cannot even definitively rule out some other combinations.

If a reader was expecting "Boyce", she would find it. On the other hand, someone expecting the name "Bryce" would certainly recognise that. This clearly is the entry of interest.

Upon a wider examination, it is plain that Thomas's occupation was not actually recorded as "labourer". A ditto mark was placed against his name, apparently referencing the last full word recorded above, which was "labourer". However, it is possible that when more than dozen young single men boarded in quick succession and the first few were labourers, the shipping clerk recorded them all as the same. It is not necessarily true that Thomas claimed to be a labourer, he may have simply failed to correct an error (if he was aware of it).

Which leaves the question of where he boarded the vessel. The people around Thomas in the list are all of Irish nationality but their names are on the document created in London on 3 December. Those people who did board in Queenstown (a week later) were recorded on a separate paper form with a different heading and distinct signature block.

The claim that Boyce/Bryce boarded in Ireland apparently arises from a marginal notation (Queenstown) added in another hand beside the the names of the group of Irish nationals (and Thomas). Perhaps a later user of the list assumed that the original was incorrect and that the Irishmen "must" have been listed on the wrong page. However, the statistical summary made on the last page at the time the list was created shows that there were a small number of Irish citizens boarded at the first port (London) before the much larger group a week later.

So when it comes to deciding how Thomas Bryce travelled to Queensland, who can I believe. My conclusion is that the reporter for the Courier got it absolutely right (which is not a claim that I would make lightly today). He got his information from the best available source and there is nothing in the (extant copies of the) original documents to contradict what he was told.

Transcription is not a straight-forward task. Every line interpreted involves dozens of decisions based not only on the marks on the paper but also the context in which they were originally made and then read. I can take issue with the interpretations made in the case of one man about whom I had additional information not available to the previous transcribers. There were hundreds of other passengers on that voyage for whom I have no basis to disagree with the published transcript. The overall value of the transcriptions should not be questioned.

Respect the work of transcribers but trust the evidence of your own eyes informed by all the background you have on the individual you are researching. Ask yourself, not only is that reading possible but also is it plausible given everything else I know about the person concerned.

References

1. 1861 Census of Scotland, Glasgow, enumeration district (ED) 52, page 28, Thomas Bryce; digital images, Scotlands People.
2. "Family Notices" The Brisbane Courier 20 September 1866: 4. {http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article1274492}
3. "PERSONAL." The Brisbane Courier 8 January 1912: 9. {http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19724675}
4. Johnson, Eileen Golden City", 1863: Immigration vessels to Queensland Self published 2003 ISBN 1 875790 63 2
5. QFHS Queensland Customs House Shipping 1852-1885: Passengers and Crew Published 2014 ISBN 978-1-921171-32-1
6. Ships passengers lists - Brisbane - inwards - 4 August 1852 to 13 December 1870 NAA: J715, ROLL 1 Item barcode 32722213