Don't forget boarders!

Just a reminder that unless the soldier or his child is living in a household with more than 15 other people, you must input the entire household. That means you need to input every person. That includes boarders.

Even if the soldier or his child is living with more than 15 other people, you still need to input all related individuals.

Soldier's spouse

As you know, if the soldier's spouse does not have children with the soldier, then we do not search for  her outside the soldier's and children's households. With that in mind, please do not add the soldier's spouse to the Grid if:

• She never had children with the soldier AND
• She was never enumerated on the census with the soldier

For example, you know from the Mil Info that the soldier married Jane in 1883 and they were divorced by 1890. They did not have any children. Given the dates of the marriage, they were never enumerated together on the census. Therefore, Jane does not need to be added to the Grid.

We are trying to save time, so we don't want to add a person to the Grid that will just have a black X for every decade.

Dwelling and house numbers

When there is no dwelling number or house number, but there is a new family number, it means there is more than one family living in the same house.

Please look in the rows above and carry down the previous dwelling number and house number, and input these numbers for your household.

Aboard ship

Recently, there has been some confusion about the state code "AS." This is a valid state code. It means "At Sea" or "Aboard Ship." It is not uncommon to find this in the census.

If you're not sure whether something is a valid state code, please look it up in your manual. There is a list of all the state/country codes and what they mean.

Progress Report - March 23

Here is our progress as of March 23, 2016

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	2722	541
Soldiers completed during last week	53	58
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	299	114
Soldiers with children complete	2423	427
% with children complete	28.5	9.5

Sharing family trees

When you share a family tree with another person, please make that person an Editor.

If you do not designate the person as an editor, she/he will not be able to add things to your tree. Several people have been confused about this recently. If you will designate your checker as an editor when you share the tree, it will make both checking and doing corrections easier.

Reminder - Completed family trees

This is just a reminder that you need to download your completed family trees in a timely fashion and get them to me. Either save them on the shared drive in the office or email them to me.

Some of you do a great job with this. Others are in need of much improvement. I'm finding that if you wait too long to download and give the trees to me, you are losing trees. Most of the time, you are able to find the missing trees. But there have been several cases in which you've been unable to locate the missing trees. That is, you deleted them from your account without downloading them.

We would like to keep these files, so please make sure you download them and give them to me.

An appropriate time to give them to me is when you've finished your assignment and the soldiers have been checked. Some of you download them as you go. That is fine. Please come up with your own system and stick to it.

Quality code review

The following people were the first to respond that they reviewed the section on quality codes in the manual. They may each add 30 minutes to the next time sheet. Thanks to all those who have responded. I expect all those who haven't responded to do so. I know that some of you won't respond until you're back from vacation.

1. Robin
2. Audrey
3. Michelle
4. AnnaLisa
5. Stacy

If you have questions about quality codes after your review, please let us know.

Deleting the Death screen

You do not need Administrative privileges to delete all the data from the Death screen. Any of you can do it. You do not need to enter it on the VCC People to Be Deleted from Grid Google doc.

To delete the Death screen:

• Open the Death screen you would like to delete
• Click the "Delete" button at the bottom of the screen

Progress Report - March 16

Here is our progress as of March 16.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	2669	483
Soldiers completed during last week	54	26
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	293	107
Soldiers with children complete	2376	376
% with children complete	28.0	8.4

Please review quality codes

Recently, there has been some confusion about quality codes. Quality codes for the soldier (HH0) are used a little differently than quality codes for the children and spouses.

For the soldier, you must always tie the information back to the Mil Info. If you have a death certificate with the parents' names and you use that information to find the soldier in the 1850 census, you may use that information to make the match. You cannot use that information to increase quality code, because the parents' names were not in the Mil Info.

Please review quality codes in your manual. Please email me to let me know when you've done this.

Rewards

Thanks for reviewing old blog posts. It is good to have a refresher every now and again.

The following people were the first to respond and let me know that they spent 30 minutes on the review. Each of these five people may add 30 minutes to her/his next time sheet. Congratulations!

1. Jessica
2. Rachelle
3. David
4. Jessie
5. Kristin

The following checking partners have already completed their checking for March. Great job! Each person in these pairs may add 30 minutes to her/his next time sheet.

1. Stacy/David
2. Mercedes/Grant

Keep up the good work!

Progress report

Here is our progress as of March 9.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	2615	457
Soldiers completed during last week	63	37
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	285	101
Soldiers with children complete	2330	356
% with children complete	27.4	7.9

Great job, everyone!

Please review

Please spend about 30 minutes reviewing posts on the blog. It does not matter which posts you review. Select posts that address items you've had questions about or difficulty with in the past.

Please email me by Friday to let me know you've completed this task.

VCC People to Be Deleted from Grid

This is just a reminder to be careful when entering information into the People to be deleted Google doc. Some of you do an excellent job. You enter all RecIds and PIDs correctly, and you give me proper instructions as to what you need done.

Some of you have a little more difficulty. When you're adding soldiers to the Google doc, please keep in mind the following:

• Type the RecId correctly. I do not have time to go hunt down your assignment and get the correct RecId.
• Type the correct PIDs in the correct fields. If you want a PID entirely deleted, please don't type it in the PID to be modified field. I will get confused. I try not to make assumptions about your intentions.
• Be sure that your instructions make sense. Please remember that I haven't been studying these families for several hours, and what makes sense to you might not make sense to me.
• Please give clear, concise information so I understand what needs to be done.
• Hit "Enter" or "Tab" after you enter information in the last field. If you just leave your cursor in the last box you typed in, then I can't see what you typed. This happens a lot.

After I've made the changes, please check the Google doc and answer the following:

• Was the change made correctly?
• Is the line highlighted pink, indicating that I had a question?

A little more care and attention will help me make the requested changes in a timely fashion.

Project 2 soldiers without children

We've told you that we don't want you spending a lot of time on HH0 for the soldiers in Project 2. This is because a lot of time was already spent on them. If you find that the work is incorrect, you may delete it. If correct decades for the soldier come up in the hints, you may accept them and input them if you don't already have them. It is OK to do a little searching if it helps you find the children.

Soldiers who don't have children are going to be dropped from this sample. But they might still be used in the future. Therefore, if correct decades come up in the hints for your soldier, you may input them even if he doesn't have children. Use your judgement, and don't spend too much time on work that was already done once.

Vacations

Some of you are going on vacation in March.

If you're going to be gone for multiple weeks, please contact your checking partner soon, so that you'll be able to complete your monthly checks in a timely fashion.

Also, if you'll be gone when time sheets are due, please make sure you submit your hours before you leave. For those of you with Bureau health insurance, please make sure you submit hours for every time period. Your health care premiums are deducted from each paycheck, and accounting has trouble if you miss a pay period. If you need clarification about this or if you're not sure what to do if you're going to miss and entire pay period, please email me.

As always, if you will be taking time off, but haven't notified me, please do so.

February 2016 Checking Stats

In February, we checked 44 soldiers under our new system. I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've tallied the number of differences. Some of these are errors, and some are judgment calls. Here are the categories and the total number of differences for each category.

GRID Errors

• MILIN?/MAR? - 4
• Missing HH member - 3
• Duplicate people - 1
• Wrong person - 1

Inferred Relationships

• Incorrect relationships - 5

Census Errors

• Name - 30
• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 90
• State Code - 0
• Missing/Wrong URL - 9
• Missing data - 56
• Additional finds - 25
• Quality Code - 19

Death Errors

• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 8
• Missing data - 26
• Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 15
• Quality Code - 5
• Additional finds - 6

Tree Errors

• Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 14

The total number of differences for all 44 soldiers is 317. This is 52 fewer differences than last month. Good job! Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences.

Duration of contributory cause of death

Some of you have found on death certificates a duration for the contributory cause of death. We do not have a field for this. DO NOT enter this information in the duration for the primary cause of death.

We've decided to make it a rule that you should enter the duration for the contributory cause of death in the Remarks field. Enter the information in the following manner:

CONTRIBUTORY DURATION: 5 YEARS 6 MONTHS

CONTRIBUTORY DURATION: MANY YEARS