I was recently attempting to figure out when Geoffrey Harold Beley of Smithers, British Columbia, the husband of my 1st cousin twice removed, Marguerite Ann Dakin, had passed away. According to family lore recorded on the Kimberley Keepers site, he had died in 1971. And this is where my still unresolved question started and also led me to an issue with the "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980" collection on Ancestry.
But first some background information on why I ended up looking at the "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980" collection. When looking for someone who died in or before 2000 in British Columbia the starting place to find a death registration is the Genealogy - General Search page from the BC Archives. I searched using various combinations of Geoff's name with no luck. So I turned to the various newspaper archive sites I use to see if I might find him mentioned. On Newspapers.com in their Publisher Extra collection I came across a June 2, 1971 article in The Smithers Interior News with a picture and article about Geoff Beley where he was honoured at a social evening on May 28, 1971 upon his retirement as a Government Agent. I even came across a mention in the December 15, 1971 edition of that same newspaper stating, "Mr. Geoff Beley returned to the coast last week on business." Assuming there is only one Geoff Beley, it would seem that he is still alive then. But after that date he just sort of disappears from the digitized newspapers I've been able to find online.
So I turned to the "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980" collection on Ancestry. I had found him listed in the 1962, 1965, 1968, and 1972 voters lists without any problem but I didn't find him in the 1974 voters lists so I figure he may have died between the end of 1971 and 1974. Since I was already in the collection I decided to also update the profile for his wife Marguerite to include those voters lists as Ancestry sources. That is when I ran into the issue on Ancestry.
It seems like when Ancestry created the indexes for that collection they missed people.
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| Ancestry.com, "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980," database and images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 Oct 2021), screen capture for Geoffrey Beley of Smithers, 1972, Rural Polling Division No. 119, Telkwa, Electoral District of Skeena, British Columbia, p 1; citing Library and Archives Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Voters Lists, Federal Elections, 1935-1980, R1003-6-3-E (RG113-B), microfilm-6214. |
Above is a screen capture of the 1972 Voters List for the Electoral District of Skeena, Rural Polling Division No. 119 Telkwa with Geoffrey Beley highlighted. We can plainly see that a Mrs. Marguerite Beley is listed below his name. We can also see a Mrs. Margaret E. Arkinstall listed above Geoffrey's name. But look below in the index section of that page in the virtual microfilm strip. Both of those women are missing! Now Mrs. Vyvyan M. Bradford is included in the index so it wasn't a matter of ignoring women or all names starting with "Mrs.". However, when I looked at that page and the associated index quite a number of the names which start with "Mrs." have been omitted.
I noticed that if I hovered my mouse over the various names, if the name was in the index, the name was highlighted in orange and a pop-out box would appear. We can see that when I hovered over Mrs. Vyvyan Bradford:
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| Ancestry.com, "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980," database and images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 18 Oct 2021), screen capture for Mrs. Vyvyan Bradford of Telkwa, 1972, Rural Polling Division No. 119, Telkwa, Electoral District of Skeena, British Columbia, p 1; citing Library and Archives Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Voters Lists, Federal Elections, 1935-1980, R1003-6-3-E (RG113-B), microfilm M-6142. |
But it didn't happen when I tried the same with Mrs. Marguerite Beley or Mrs. Margaret Arkinstall. Both of their names remained unhighlighted. And they weren't the only ones on the page missed.
Maybe it was only isolated to the 1972 images. Alas, it wasn't. I checked the 1968 voters list for that same place and although both Geoffery and Margaret Beley were indexed, a few names down I found that Mrs. Lorraine E. Cullis of Telkwa wasn't indexed. And it just isn't women missed. On that same 1968 page Mrs. Lucille C. and David F. Brooks, both of Telkwa, are missing from the index but Robert L. Brooks of Telkwa recorded before them and Vincent S. Brooks of Telkwa record after them are indexed. I also check the 1965 list and also found people in the image not listed in the index. So it seems to be an issue with a number of years.
Why is this a problem for us?
First of all, imagine the indexes for the 1921 census of Canada missing every tenth or twentieth
person on the page? How frustrating would that be for your research?
Secondly, it is enough of a challenge to find people when the human or computer OCR generated indexes butcher names, like what happened to "Mis Marrmrey Beley" in the 1968 voters list. Yet it turns into a genealogist's nightmare when names are present in the image but not included in the index. To add to one's aggravation, there doesn't seem to be a way for us, the customer, to add those missing names into the index.
Finally, the voters lists covers the time period after the 1921 census and can act as a census substitute. The voters lists don't work well as a census substitute for those with relatively common names but for someone like Geoffrey Harold Beley and his wife Marguerite these lists can allow you to track people over the years and possibly narrow down when they may have passed away or moved out of the country.
So, if you can't find people in the index for the "Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980" collection on Ancestry, it might not be that they are dead, have moved to another country, or the transcription is horrible. It might be that they were left off the index. So good luck in reading through the images!