Did your ancestor die in "Y, Somme"?

+4 votes
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Here's one for the genealogical humor list. This is one of those items that I'm sure we all eventually see in our travels around the internet of genealogy. Another researcher (not on WT) pointed out to me that there is an explanation for why so many people are said to have died or been buried in the tiny French village of "Y, Somme, Picardie, France." 

They didn't. But here's why they are logged that way in online trees (which, of course, are unsourced!)

"Y, Somme, Picardie, France...SERIOUSLY?"

in The Tree House by Bobbie Hall G2G6 Pilot (395k points)
Well this explains it!  Thanks Bobby.  :--)
Not too from  Y, thousands and thousands of men did actually die there  in the Somme

Of course there were many deaths in the 1916-1918 Battles of the Somme, Helen.

Y, Somme, Picardie, France as a death location for people born far from Picardie and in entirely different periods of time is in all likelihood false as explained in the linked blog.

2 Answers

+4 votes
 
Best answer

And if you want the names of people who really died in Y, have a look at the table décennale 1792-1802. I count 482 deaths during that period. The complete records are online only for the period 1839-1887, and those are reconstructed records, originals having probably been destroyed during WW1.

by Julien Cassaigne G2G6 Mach 7 (77.6k points)
selected by Bobbie Hall
+5 votes
It's been up in G2G a few times before, for example: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/20328/awake-thinking-about-somme-picardie-france-haunted-place-earth - from 2013

But since it doesn't go away from Internet Genealogyit certainly bears repeating.
by Eva Ekeblad G2G6 Pilot (613k points)
Ah, when I searched for Y, Somme that one didn't come up in the first page or two. Thanks!

I haven't seen nearly as many of these autocomplete errors recently as we had a few years ago.

Some of the other funny bloopers were:

  •  U, Cocle, Panama
  • Young, Texas, United States
  • Age, Cuanza Sul, Angola
  • Colony, Laurel, Kentucky
  • Sea, Manado, Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia
  • Church, Wetzel, West Virginia

All of these are real places of course, but when they turn up on the profile of someone who lived thousands of miles away or two centuries before the "place" was established, we start thinking of an autocomplete error related to the first word in the place name.

They were probably in GEDCOM imports in the wild early days and are fairly easy to find and correct once you are on to them.

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