Some thoughts on linking

I was discussing quality code 4 matches and census linking with Irene this week. She had some good comments that I'd like to share with you.

We both agreed that sometimes people take a QC4 match because they don't want to leave a no find on the grid. They think that any match is better than no match. That is not the case. We don't want to collect false matches. Just because you only found one person with the right name living in the right county doesn't mean you've found the correct person. If you've found two possible matches, you can't necessarily choose the person whose age is only off by 3 years instead of 5 years. Beware of common names. When an individual lives in a large city, there might be multiple people with the same name on the census and others who just got missed by the enumerator.

Here is what Irene had to say about linking records:

I see linking records and clues like stepping stones across a creek - you need to step on each stone to get you to the next one without skipping over any of them. There needs to be a clear link between the starting info and the records we use and attach to the family.

Please keep this in mind as you do census linking.