Wednesday, September 30, 2015

New checking system

I sent all of you an email about our new checking system, which will begin on October 1. It is summarized here for easy reference.

Who

  • All inputters, who are fully trained, will be divided into pairs.
  • It is your responsibility to coordinate and communicate with your partner.
What
  • Each person in the pair will select two soldiers from her/his current assignment for the other person to check.
  • One soldier will have a full check, and one will have a quick check.
  • Email the checking documents (follow the guidelines in your manual), indicating if it was a quick check or a full check, and how long it took to do the checking. The email should be sent to the inputter, Sandy, and Heather.
When
  • This is a monthly assignment.
  • Checking documents should be emailed no later than the last day of the month.
  • Pairs for the next month will emailed on the last day of the month.
Why
  • We need to check our data for quality control and ongoing training.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Soldier's spouse and adopted children

If the only children the soldier had were adopted children, please go ahead and search for the children. Do not search for the soldier's wife in this case. Here is information about searching for the soldier's spouse.

  • If the spouse had children with the soldier, then search for the spouse.
  • If the spouse did not have children with the soldier, then DO NOT search for the spouse.
  • If the spouse brought step children into her marriage with the soldier, but did not have children with him, then DO NOT search for the spouse.
  • If the spouse and the soldier adopted children, then DO NOT search for the spouse.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Maiden names on the family tree

One of you had a questions about listing women under their maiden names on the Ancestry family tree. Here is Sandy's explanation.

The females should always be by maiden name.  This, I believe, is an Ancestry recommendation and standard for genealogy, but I couldn't find where I had read that before.  We can see what a female's married name is by virtue of her placement on the tree.  This way the veteran's daughters will all have his last name and can easily be differentiated by daughters-in-law with the same first name as the daughters.  If we are using maiden names for some females, it makes sense to keep the tree consistent and have all females listed with maiden names.  You can mark the married name as an alternate name.  From reading comments on Ancestry, it is apparent that the computer will know a female's married name and still give you hints for her with a married name even though her maiden name is the name that shows on the tree.  The other advantage of having the maiden name show is because it is a constant.  The married name may change if the person gets married more than once.  If we don't know the maiden name, then she should show up on the tree with first name only.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Progress report

Here is our Project 1 progress report as of Wednesday.


  • 1107 total soldiers complete
  • 141 w/o children (to be removed from sample)
  • 966 soldiers with children complete
  • % with children complete (n=8,500) =  11.4


Here are your link rates for all children outside the soldier's household. That means, this is the percent of children you found and input who were living in their own households.

  • 1910 - 57%
  • 1920 - 64.7%
  • 1930 - 65.5%
  • 1940 - 57.6%
These are excellent find rates. Great job!

Thursday, September 24, 2015

New checking system

Beginning October 1, we will have a new checking system. Everyone except Jessica and David will be off 100% checks, so it's time for everyone to check and be checked. The purpose for this is ongoing training and quality control of the data.

We will probably tweak the system, but in the beginning, here is how it will go. I will assign each of you to a pair. During the month, the people in each pair will email their partners. The two of them, they will each do two checks of the other person's work - a full check and a quick check. You get to choose which soldiers you want checked. The next month, you'll all be assigned a new partner.

Next week, look for an email from me with more detailed instructions and a list of the October pairs. You will each still have to check the work of trainees in addition to your partner.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

GEDCOM files

Just a reminder about your completed family trees.

Some of you have been doing a great job of sending me the GEDCOM files of your completed family trees. Others need to improve.

When you're finished with your assignment and any checking is completed, please download ALL the completed family trees for that assignment from Ancestry. Please EMAIL all the files to me. They are small, so you should have no trouble sending them as attachments. After you've sent them to me, you may delete the trees from your Ancestry account. If you're unsure how to do this, please ask or consult your training manual.

We might want to use these files later, and it would be a shame to lose all that work.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

More comments and clarifications

Thanks to Sandy for making notes on a few things that have come up in the checks recently.

  • Town of anything--No need to put "town" in either before or after.  Same goes for city of...
  • Town following the name--You don't have to put it in unless you think it's part of the name of the town.  It's never wrong to input it if it's there.
  • District No.--  You don't need to put in NO, but it's not wrong if you do.  Checkers may say it once to inputter,  but the inputter doesn't need to go back and fix it.  Just remember going forward that it saves time by not typing in NO.  Do not ever include the symbol # for number.
  • Marking death records --Mark all the death records you found and attached to the tree.  Include data from all of them onto your grid. Only include the links from the two best sources. 
  • Grid names -- It doesn't matter how the name appears on the grid. It's just an administrative tool to help the inputter. You can make the prime name whatever is best to help identify that person.  (If you have 5 Ann Banks on your grid, spouse of vet, child of vet, spouses of vet's sons, then by all means pick the name that is easiest to identify them.)  However, the females on the trees should always be listed with their maiden names.
  • WWI Draft Cards --  If the draft card has an exact birth date matching your child to the mil info AND an exact address matching to a census year, then that census year is a QC1 even if the spouse's name is not on the draft card.


Monday, September 21, 2015

Looking for an interesting Civil War POW soldier

Those of you who worked on soldiers in the POW database, please look back on all your fond memories of that time. We will be making a video and would like to feature an interesting POW. We're looking for a soldier that matches some or all of the following criteria.

  • POW
  • heroic
  • interesting disabilities
  • has photos
  • interesting life story
If any of you input such a soldier, could you let me know?

Friday, September 18, 2015

Death causes

One of you requested a post about some of the death causes we've collected in our data. CSL was kind enough to generate a list of the most common causes of death and find images for each of them.

First some general rules about inputting death causes.

  • Spell the words correctly even if they are spelled wrong on the document.
  • Do not use a dash (-) to separate multiple causes of death.
  • To separate multiple causes of death use a slash (/), semi-colon (;), or the word AND.
  • If you are not sure what it says, please ask.
  • Do not write nonsense words.
Here are some of the more common death causes. These will be input in the fields "Primary Cause of Death" and "Contributory Cause of Death."


The primary cause of death is APOPLEXY and the contributory cause is ARTERIOSCLEROSIS. There is no need to have a space between arterio and sclerosis.


The primary cause of death is ARTERIOSCLEROTIC HEART DISEASE. The contributory causes are ARTERIOSCLEROSIS GENERAL/PARALYSIS AGITANS.


The cause of death is CARCINOMA STOMACH.


The causes of death are CANCER UTERINE and METASTASIS. Note that you should not enter the dash (-) between cancer and uterine. Metastasis is often hard to read, but it will be related to cancer and will usually look like the letter M followed by what might or might not look like a bunch of letters.


The cause of death is CARCINOMA OF STOMACH. It is fine to leave in the word "of."


VALVULAR DISEASE OF HEART is a common cause of death. Valvular is often spelled incorrectly. The contributory cause is ANEMIA.


This cause of death should be entered as follows HEART DISEASE/AORTIC STENOSIS. The contributory causes are ARTERIOSCLEROSIS and NEPHRITIS.


The cause of death is CEREBRAL HAEMORRHAGE. It is correct to type haemorrhage or hemorrhage.


The cause of death is HEMORRHAGE CEREBRAL, and the contributory cause is ARTERIOSCLEROSIS. Note that arteriosclerosis appears frequently, but is often spelled creatively or written poorly. Please always spell it correctly. We have seen it input many different ways.


The cause of death is LA GRIPPE, not la triffe. La Grippe means influenza.


Here the contributory cause of death is INFLUENZA.


The contributory cause of death is MYOCARDITIS. We've seen this misspelled more ways than we can count, so please be careful.


The causes of death are PARALYSIS/CHRO MYOCARDITIS. We know the slash (/) goes before chronic, because chronic usually proceeds the word it modifies. If you're not sure, please ask.


The primary cause of death is MYOCARDITIS. The contributory causes are ARTERIOSCLEROSIS/HYPERTENSION/DIABETES.


The cause of death is CHRONIC INTERSTITIAL NEPHRITIS. I know the second word kind of looks like "intestinal," but that word does not go with nephritis, where as "interstitial" often accompanies it.


The cause of death is CHRONIC PARENCHYMATOUS NEPHRITIS. Nephritis is difficult to read here, as it looks like an "r" where the tail of the "s" runs into the cross of the "t."


The death is causes by BRONCHO PNEUMONIA, and the contributing cause is BRONCHIAL ASTHMA.


This cause of death is LOBAR PNEUMONIA, not tober. Lobar is very difficult to clean, so it's extra important that you spell it correctly. If you see a word that looks something like the above before the word pneumonia, then it will be lobar. The contributory cause is INFLUENZA.


This death cause is HYPOSTATIC PNEUMONIA. The contributory causes are CEREBRAL VASCULAR ACCIDENT/TRAUMA.


This is PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS. There are many types of tuberculosis, but you will most often see the type pulmonary.

 
This reads PHTHISIC TUBERCULOSIS.


A common cause of death is PHTHISIS PULMONALIS. It means pulmonary tuberculosis.


The primary cause of death is CORONARY THROMBOSIS and OCCLUSION. The contributory causes are CORONARY SCLEROSIS/ARTERIOSCLEROSIS.


The cause of death is CORONARY THROMBOSIS, and the contributory cause is ACUTE CHOLECYSTITIS.


The primary cause of death is UREMIA FROM URINARY SUPPRESSION. The contributory cause is GANGLIO NECROMA AROUND URINARY BLADDER. Note that suprapubic cystotomy is an operation and does not need to be included.


The cause of death is URAEMIA FROM SEPSIS. It is correct to type uraemia or uremia. The contributory causes are HYDRONEPHROSIS and HYDROURETER.


The causes of death are RETENTION and UREMIA. The contributory cause is CARDIAC HYPERTENSION. Note that you should not include the dash (-) between cardiac and hypertension.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

More on names

Please see Irene's comment on the original Names post. She had some examples of strange ways names can appear.

What you're trying to accomplish is to make the name conform to our standard name format rules using whatever information you have. Anything that is not a last name, first name, or middle initial/name should be in parentheses ( ). If the first name or last name is left blank, let us know by inputting "(BLANK)."

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

This is NOT family history

I recognize that all of you are aware that the work we are doing is data collection for a research study, not family history. Unfortunately, it looks a lot like family history when we're doing it. The data user does not see what you see. She will not see a Grid. He will not see your helpful notes in the Remarks. She will not see all the hyperlinks you included to demonstrate how you got to the data you entered. She will not see any individuals.

All of our data is aggregated and users take what they want from it. They'll never see your carefully constructed Grid or all that extra work you put into your Family Tree. They will see data in specific variables, and that is all.

With that in mind, here are some things for you to consider:

  • If you do a lot of extra work that you have not been trained or asked to do, then the data you're generating will potentially be different than the data everyone else is collecting. This might add bias.
  • DO NOT EVER make up a code. We have standard codes for a reason. That is, data users can go to the code book and user guides and see that DT stands for Deutschland. If you've decided to call Dakota Territory DT, then you've entered incorrect data. It doesn't matter that you explain what you did in the remarks.
  • Don't use public Family Trees to enter death information for grandchildren and in-laws. This is a waste of time, and we do not have the funding for this. It doesn't make sense for a couple of you to do this when nobody else is.
  • On the Death screen, there should never be a hyperlink to any record that is not a death record - no marriage records, no WWI service records, etc. Save the hyperlinks for the two best sources of death information.
  • Also on the Death screen, you do not have to type in remarks the death source you read in the Mil Info. As long as you've checked the Mil Info box, you've done what you're supposed to do. We already have that other information; please do take the time to type it. Of course, type the cause of death if you find it on the Mil Info.
  • When you're using Other as a death source, type or copy and paste the full title of the record.
If you're not sure about something, please ask. It's more important to ask a question than risk entering bad data. Please read this post twice.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Names

Sometimes, you'll be looking at a census manuscript or death certificate and notice that parts of some of the names are missing. Here is what you can do in some of those situations.

The census manuscript says:

Smith, John
Smith, Jane
Smith, baby

Enter the baby in the following manner:

SMITH, (BABY)

The death certificate lists the parents names. (Yea!) But the mother's maiden name is missing. (Boo!) Enter her name in the following manner:

(BLANK), Mary

Can you think of any similar situations? Let us know in the comments.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

WooHoo!

Good job, everyone. We've completed 10.1% of Project 1! Keep up the good work!

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Death place

Recently, we noticed that you're often marking death certificate as the death source, but you don't have a place of death.

If you're getting the information off a death certificate, then there MUST be a place of death, even if it's only the state. To register a death (that is, get a death certificate), you must know where the person died. So, if you don't know where the person died, then don't mark death certificate as the source.

Friday, September 4, 2015

State codes and abbreviations

After explaining how to understand a RecID, I thought it would be useful for you to know the two-digit numerical codes associated with each state. This will give you a better idea where your recruits are from. Note - our soldiers never served from many of these states.


Code
State
Abbreviation
41
Alabama
AL
81
Alaska
AK
61
Arizona
AZ
42
Arkansas
AR
91
Army
71
California
CA
62
Colorado
CO
90
Colored Troops
CI
01
Connecticut
CT
11
Delaware
DE
43
Florida
FL
44
Georgia
GA
82
Hawaii
HI
63
Idaho
ID
21
Illinois
IL
22
Indiana
IN
31
Iowa
IA
32
Kansas
KS
51
Kentucky
KY
45
Louisiana
LA
02
Maine
ME
52
Maryland
MD
03
Massachusetts
MA
23
Michigan
MI
33
Minnesota
MN
46
Mississippi
MS
34
Missouri
MO
64
Montana
MT
92
Navy
35
Nebraska
NE
65
Nevada
NV
04
New Hampshire
NH
12
New Jersey
NJ
66
New Mexico
NM
13
New York
NY
47
North Carolina
NC
36
North Dakota
ND
24
Ohio
OH
53
Oklahoma
OK
72
Oregon
OR
14
Pennsylvania
PA
05
Rhode Island
RI
48
South Carolina
SC
37
South Dakota
SD
54
Tennessee
TN
49
Texas
TX
93
United States
US
67
Utah
UT
06
Vermont
VT
40
Virginia
VA
73
Washington
WA
55
Washington DC
DC
56
West Virginia
WV
25
Wisconsin
WI
68
Wyoming
WY