Progress report - May 23

Here is our progress as of today, May 23, 2018.

	Project 1	Project 2 - USCT
	n = 8,500	n = 4,500
Total soldiers complete	8695	4058
Soldiers completed during last  week	86	13
Soldiers w/o children (to be removed from sample)	774	756
% of completed soldiers w/o children	8.9	18.6
Soldiers with children complete	7921	3302
% with children complete	93.2	73.4
# soldiers with children left to complete	579	1198

Please notice the last row of the table. This is the number of soldiers we have left to complete. We started out with 13,000 soldiers, and we are down to 1,777 soldiers left in both Projects 1 and 2.

Keep up the good work!

Spring Forward inputting challenge - Results!

We've come to the end of our Spring Forward inputting challenge, and I have good news and bad news.

Good news: I'm pleased with how hard you all worked to meet this goal. You did a really good job trying to complete a difficult task.

Bad news: You didn't reach the goal. Bummer. You were 41 soldiers short of reaching the goal. Here are the results.

Project 1: 711
Project 2: 148

Total: 859

Bad news: Since you didn't reach the goal, I cannot give you two days of bonus hours.

Good news: You came super close to meeting the goal, so I've decided to give you one day of bonus hours. WooHoo! Look for an email from me letting you know how many bonus hours you receive.


We have just over 600 soldiers left to complete Project 1. We need to do this by the first week of August. I think you can do it. Keep up the good work!

Spring Forward inputting challenge - We're almost there!

You've all been working really hard this week. There are only 107 soldiers left to complete before the end of our Spring Forward inputting challenge!

If each of you completes 7 more soldiers this week, you'll easily reach the goal.

Keep up the good work!

Spring Forward inputting challenge - Update May 14, 2018

Here is our progress nine weeks into our Spring Forward inputting challenge. We have one week left. Since March 10, we have completed the following number of soldiers:

Project 1: 624
Project 2: 131

Total: 755

Our challenge ends on May 20. We only have 145 soldiers left to complete. Good luck!

Death Sources

Irene has put together a handy document that lists sources of online death information for each state. It is an excellent list, and I hope you will use it as you search. The list is color-coded. Scroll to column K to see the key.

Here is a link to the list.

Here are Irene's tips for using the list.

When I start a new company, I like to see what death records are available in the state I'll be working in. (Note: this won't apply to a lot of you because Project 1 assignments are are not by state.) I look at the time span that I can expect to find death records and find out where the best death sources are. For example, for Florida, there is a death index on Ancestry with limited info, but on FamilySearch, there is an index with a lot of extra info including parent names and exact birth dates. If I have a general idea of what's available ahead of time, it saves me time while I'm searching.

I still like to start out searching for a death record on the general search pages on Ancestry and FamilySearch. This way, if I'm lucky, I can find their death record along with their burial, SSDI or other death records in one search. If I don't find them right away, then I like to pinpoint which index is best for my search. If I limit myself to the general searches, I am searching blindly. If I do a general search for a person who died in 1913 in Georgia without success, I can quickly see on the list that the death records began in 1914 and I would waste my time by continuing to search for them. On the other hand, if I do a general search for a person who died in 1915 in Georgia without success, I can quickly see on the list that their record should be listed and it is worth spending some extra time searching with different spellings or search parameters to find it. It's also nice to search a specific index on Ancestry because we can search for exact death year or death date, but we are not able to do that in a general search.

I also find it helpful to compare time spans covered in the indexes. For example, for Louisiana, I can see that the death records go to 1964 on Ancestry, and to 1960 on Family Search, but in the "Other" column, there is an index that goes to 1967. This is great to know if the person I am searching for happened to die in 1966.

Thanks, Irene!

Spring Forward inputting challenge - Update May 7, 2018

Here is our progress eight weeks into our Spring Forward inputting challenge. Since March 10, we have completed the following number of soldiers:

Project 1: 549
Project 2: 120

Total: 669

Our challenge ends on May 20. We only have 231 soldiers left to complete. I think you can do it. Good luck!