I came across a good one last night. I’ve started to look at the West Riding Parish Registers that Ancestry recently digitised – I know quite a few problems have been reported (and some have been fixed) but so far I’m only doing the simple stuff of getting what’s indexed.
Back to the error: the image says “Gen uxor Ricardi Micklethwaite”
The transcription says “General Ricardi Micklethwaite” 🙂
For those unfamiliar with the Mock Latin the church used to use, “uxor” means wife, and Ricardi is used instead of Ricardus to mean “of Richard”. I know the burial was in the time of the Civil War, and indeed one Micklethwait was killed at the battle of Marston Moor, but uxor gives the game away.
This error brings back memories of another transcription error I came across a while back – I don’t know if it’s still there. In the 1851 census, Mary Newsome of Lepton, Huddersfield, Yorkshire has her birthplace transcribed as “Italy Bridge Lane”. Checking the image reveals the nonsense should be “Staly Bridge Lancs” 🙂
Andy Micklethwaite's Family History Blog 