Progress as of June 28

Here is our progress report for June 28, 2017.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	6723	2178
Soldiers completed during last  week	75	33
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	607	371
% of completed soldiers w/o children	9.0	17.0
Soldiers with children complete	6116	1807
% with children complete	72.0	40.2

Census meeting, revisited

Let's turn the Wayback Machine to March and see a few photos from our Census meeting.

Anything interesting?

A request from Sandy.

Have you ever run across a story you’d like to share?  Did your veteran shoot his arm off while bragging about his gun skills in a bar?  Did your child live for decades in an asylum after seeing her twin burn in a fire? 

Did something make you laugh the way you saw it indexed?  For example a physician by occupation was in the industry of medicine and luggage?  What!?  (It actually said surgery, not luggage).  Try guessing this occupation:  Riching Switevator   (Riding Instructor).  And this one:  Brailbale Ployer?  (Baseball player).  Know anyone who works in Cream and Finance? (It was a grocer in cream and produce)

Did you run across a great name? Doctor Who or Major Major Major?

Don’t take a lot of time, let me emphasize that again, DON’T TAKE A LOT OF TIME, but if going forward you find something interesting, jot it down briefly and send to Sandy in an email: masons@nber.org.  We’ll make a collection and post them occasionally.   For stories of the vet, include his name and recid. Go ahead and copy me for stories about vets. I might post them to Facebook.

Results of medium-priority POW soldier redo

Here are the results of the additional work you completed on the POW soldiers. Great work!

• 591 soldiers redone
• 624 new death dates
• 590 to children or step children
• 34 to wives
• 664 new death causes
• 540 to children or step children
• 124 to wives
• 759 new census links
• 34 new children added to the grid

Overall, POW children now have higher linkage rates than the non-POW sample

Progress as of June 21

Here is our progress as of June 21, 2017. Additionally, you completed all 591 POW soldiers. Good job!

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	6648	2145
Soldiers completed during last  week	39	28
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	601	368
% of completed soldiers w/o children	9.0	17.2
Soldiers with children complete	6047	1777
% with children complete	71.1	39.5

Progress as of June 14

Here is our progress report as of June 14, 2017. We've slowed down because most of you are working on POW soldiers, but you're almost done with those.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	6609	2117
Soldiers completed during last  week	15	28
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	597	363
% of completed soldiers w/o children	9.0	17.1
Soldiers with children complete	6012	1754
% with children complete	70.7	38.9

No apostrophes

This is just a reminder that you should NEVER type apostrophes ( ' ) anywhere in the VCC screens. Don't type them in the household information. Don't type them in the names. Don't type them in remarks. If you have an apostrophe anywhere in the screen, you will not be able to save that decade. If there is an apostrophe in the person's name or in the town name, leave the apostrophe out. If the person is named O'Connor, type OCONNOR. If the person is living in Coeur D'alene, type COEUR DALENE.

NEVER type apostrophes.

May 2017 checking stats

In May, we checked 42 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? - 6
Missing HH member - 11
Duplicate people - 1
Wrong person - 0
Other - 5

Inferred Relationships

Incorrect relationships - 2

Census Errors

Name - 55
Typo/Reading/Wrong - 124
State Code - 0
Missing/Wrong URL - 1
Missing data - 42
Additional finds - 13
Quality Code - 21

Death Errors

Typo/Reading/Wrong - 15
Missing data - 29
Missing/Wrong URL/Source - 21
Quality Code - 0
Additional finds - 16

Tree Errors

Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - 17

The total number of differences for all 42 soldiers is 379. This is 22 more differences than April, when we checked 46 soldiers. This means that the number of errors increased while the number of soldiers checked decreased. Some differences/errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar differences. Some mistakes are inevitable, but please pay close attention so that the number of errors can be minimized.

Always update family trees

Please make sure you're always updating the family tree. This is for three reasons:

1. We will be using some of this information as data.
2. In the future, we will be using the trees to help us decrease inputting time.
3. Filling out the tree completely helps Ancestry find hints, which will help you find more links in less time.

This does not mean you need to spend time adding every single city directory that comes up in the hints. You do not need to do that, but adding the city directories from years near the census decades would probably be useful.

Please make sure you do the following:

• Make sure all relationships are correct.
• Update names.
• Add birth, marriage, and death records.
• Add military records.
• Add all census decades.
• Add any other record that will be useful in generating hints. You are not required to add all records to the tree. Use your judgment, and make sure you're not spending too much time adding records that don't matter.

This will help our trees be more consistent and help you find more links to records.