Correcting Ellis

[warriorrabbit]

Hi,

Has anyone ever contacted Ellis Island about a correction? Did they fix it? How long did it take?

Given that 'cousin Dovico Dco' (Domenico Dovico) was transcribed as 'Doriso Deo Cu...' at ellisisland.org and something equally creative at Ancestry (and I would never have found this record at all were it not for the help of people here), I typed in Cu... and So... for kicks over at Ellis. There are a lot of records.

I just noticed the email link (was it always there?) for notifying them of corrections, so I sent them the amended info on Domenico Dovico. Then I followed that with corrections on a bunch of others that were either guessed at with the 'So...' or that were full names but ones I noticed were wrong, from people names to place names.

Actually, I've got about another 40 corrections sitting in my draft mailbox, but as a science experiment I wanted to wait to see how long it took them to respond to the ones I sent on Sunday. The form letter that generates when you click the link says they will respond if they examine the record and correct the info. They don't give a timeframe.

I was wondering if others had experience with correcting them. I was also wondering if maybe this community as a group would be interested in making corrections a project. Maybe going boat by boat, single page by single page...Posting a page and determining via consensus what the names and regions really are, and then notifying the Ellis Foundation.

Too ambitious? If not, I'll just keep plugging away at it when time allows. If they really do look at suggested corrections, I'm sure I can do some good. It'll just take a while.

[warriorrabbit]

I just wanted to update everyone who might be interested.

Today I received two emails from the Ellis Island Foundation. They made corrections to two records that I had contacted them about on April 13. That's just a little over two weeks. Not bad!

Now, I sent more than two, but maybe they're still working on the others. Or they didn't agree. The original form letter indicated they would respond if they made the correction, not if they didn't.

It's just nice to know that they are making the corrections, and that the time frame isn't *that* bad. (Surprisingly fast, actually. I thought it would be months.)