Read the Original Before Incorporating that Transcribed Location

Ancestry, FamilySearch, and other online genealogical data storehouses attempt to make it easier to “grow your tree” by allowing the user to directly import a transcription from a record into an “event” for a person in their tree.

It truly makes it “point and click” easy to add events and locations to an online tree. It’s the reason why many online trees indicate my great-grandmother died in Wapello County, Iowa instead of Lee County, Iowa (because the location was transcribed incorrectly). It’s the reason why ancestor Focke Goldenstein is listed as having a variety of “first names” of which several stem from incorrect transcriptions of records (some come from his name being spelled wrong, which is a slightly different problem).

Read the original record before including something from that record in your tree. Transcriptions can be incorrect.