Ever had child

Those of you who are working on Project 1 might remember that there is a column on your input log called "Ever had child." I thought I'd give you an explanation of what the information in this column means. The 1s and 0s in this column don't guarantee that the soldier did or did not have children. They merely indicate that he might or might not have children. In short, the numbers mean the following:

• 1 = something is entered in the pension children fields
• 0 = nothing is entered in the pension children fields

If a 0 is entered in this column, all it means is that there was no indication in the pension that the soldier had children. There weren't any letters, affidavits, or family circulars that noted the presence or absence of children in the soldier's family. We just don't know if he had kids. Often, if the soldier had children we would find mention of them in the pension, but this is not always true.

If a 1 is entered in this column, it means that there is some indication in the pension that the soldier did or did not have children. There will be a 1 in this column if the pension contained any of the following kinds of information in Children: Name field in the pension data:

• a child's name
• (child) - indicating that there is evidence of a child, but no further information
• (no child) - indicating that somewhere in the pension it was stated that there are no children

Often, you'll see a 1 and be surprised that the soldier has no kids. That's fine. Other times you'll see a 0 and think the soldier is childless only to find out that he has 14 kids. That is a bummer.

I hope this information helps as you use the information in the Ever had child column.

Completed family trees

This is just your periodic reminder that you need to download your completed family trees (GEDCOM files). We are saving these files for future use.

When you've downloaded them, you need to save them to the shared drive (those of you in the office) or email them to me. Please do not make me wait a month after you've completed your assignment to get your trees. They are due when you complete your assignment. The exception to this is for work that is out for checks. You may wait until a soldier is checked before providing me his completed tree. Please don't make me email you and ask for your trees. It creates more work for me and makes record keeping more difficult.

As usual, some of you are really great at downloading and saving your trees. I appreciate that. If you need help downloading your trees, please ask for help.

Arteriosclerosis v. Atherosclerosis

It was just brought to my attention that there might be some confusion between arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis. These words are often misspelled in the records. We've told you to spell arteriosclerosis correctly, regardless of how it's spelled on the document. We don't want you to see atherosclerosis and assume it is a misspelling of arteriosclerosis. It is not. Atherosclerosis is a form of arteriosclerosis, but you should not use the words interchangeably. If you're not sure which word it is, ask.

In summary, these are two different words and should not be confused:

• arteriosclerosis
• atherosclerosis

Please use Family Search

Sometimes documents such as birth, death, and marriage records are not available on Ancestry, but they are available on Family Search. Please use Family Search when records you need are not available on Ancestry.

Additionally, sometimes you find a death date on Ancestry, but no death cause. Please look on Family Search to see if you can find a record with cause of death. This information is important to our study.

Some of you have not signed up for Family Search accounts. An account is required to look at some of the documents. The account is free, so please sign up for one the next time you need to use Family Search.

Cool photo

Sandy found this photo with James Maricle of A 32 WI INF. We don't know if any of these soldiers are Maricle, but it's still a cool photo.

Seeking examples for a training meeting

In February or March, we will have our fabulous genealogists come to Vienna for a week of training meetings. To facilitate this, we are seeking examples of individuals and families that you're having difficulty finding information for, either census or death. Through the end of December, please do the following:

• As you work, notice when you're having difficulty finding either census or death information for a family or individual you are working on.
• Please note, do not tell me about every yellow X on your grid. If you have one yellow X in a sea of green, I'm not interested in this person.
• We're more interested in the "I can't find this person anywhere" or the "I know I should be able to find this person, but I can't" sort of situations.
• I'm hoping you'll recognize the examples I'm looking for when you come across them.
• When you've found a good example, email me the following information
• RecId number
• Soldier's name
• PID of the person you're having trouble with
• Any information about it you feel we need (please keep this to a minimum as the genealogists will be doing their own research)

We are looking for families that will be good for training. I will create a list for Janice and Irene to review and research. Additionally, if you have any burning research related questions, feel free to send those to me as well.

An additional note about yesterday's NHDVS post

In yesterday's post about using National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, we told you to, "double check his military service to make sure it is the right soldier." How do you do this?

For both Project 1 and Project 2, the soldier's military service is indicated in his RecId number. Please review this post from September 2015 for more information.

National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers

Here is some helpful advice from Janice.

Anytime you see that a soldier’s last residence is the US National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, you should get a bit excited because that means you have a source that will give you a cause of death, which is a big part of this project. Go to the Ancestry site: US National Homes for Disabled volunteer Soldiers NHDVS Link (you'll want to bookmark this page), and type in the soldier’s name. When you pull up the record, you can double check his military service to make sure it is the right soldier. Be sure not to confuse the “disabilities when admitted” at the top of the page with the “cause of death” at the the bottom right of the page.

Progress report as of November 9, 2016

Here is our progress as of November 9, 2016.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	4805	1580
Soldiers completed during last 2 weeks	182	32
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	478	275
% of completed soldiers w/o children	9.9	17.4
Soldiers with children complete	4327	1305
% with children complete	50.9	29.0

Kate the cat in costume

A belated Happy Halloween to all of you.

October checking stats

In October, we checked 44 soldiers under our 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? - 7
• Missing HH member - 5
• Duplicate people - 5
• Wrong person - 2
• Other - 4

Inferred Relationships

• Incorrect relationships - 16

Census Errors

• Name - 47
• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 79
• State Code - 0
• Missing/Wrong URL - 2
• Missing data - 39
• Additional finds - 17
• Quality Code - 18

Death Errors

• Typo/Reading/Wrong - 12
• Missing data - 29
• Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 6
• Quality Code - 3
• Additional finds - 8

Tree Errors

• Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 19

The total number of differences for all 44 soldiers is 318. This is 130 fewer differences than September, when we checked 48 soldiers. Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences. Let's see if we can reduce these differences in November.

Duplicate family members

Check carefully to avoid duplicates.  Make sure when you see a grandchild with your vet, or a niece or nephew with a child of the vet, that you realize that this is a person that you might already have on the grid or might find later living with their immediate family.