Here are the notes from our recent meeting. Please read them and let us know if you have questions or concerns. Sorry, tables and images did not copy correctly. Please refer to the emailed notes for the missing images.
ANCESTRY ISSUES:
Family Tree:
·
You do not have to clear all your hints nor do
you have to attach all the confirmed hints to your person. Often numerous military records pop up in
hints that we already have collected through the pension and military service
collections. You do not need to take the
time to attach all these hints. ALWAYS attach confirmed WWI and WWII draft
cards.
·
You do not have to click “Ignore” for all the
bad hints either if you don’t want to.
You can leave them hanging.
Searching Notes:
·
Searching by Race: If you want to narrow your
search to only black people and exclude whites, you will have to do separate
searches for Negro, Black, Colored and Mulatto.
See the chart below for the predominant term used in each decade. Typing in one of those will not find the others.
I have found if black is somehow added to
the index in brackets (not parenthesis), then a person labeled originally as
Negro will appear with a search of black/exact. However, if a Negro has black
on the preview page in parenthesis (not brackets), that person will not be
found with a search of black/exact.
If you put in black but don’t mark exact,
you’ll get results that include whites, but all the black people will be listed
first.
·
Searching with Family Members: Ancestry has
changed the nature of searching with family relationships. Previously, you could add children’s names
without it being an exact search. Be
aware that now it is an exact search for whichever children’s names are listed
despite the fact that there is no check box marked “Exact.” Hopefully Ancestry
will fix this.
·
Searching by Street: You can search with street
name on 1910, 1920 and 1940. If you get
some good finds using street names, send Sandy an email with the recid, the
decade and the person found.
Source Citation Changes
·
Page numbers aren’t showing up in the source
citations anymore. We don’t know if this is temporary or not. See the info under Page Numbers below to
determine what to do for these cases.
INPUTTING ISSUES
Page Numbers
·
Sometimes there is more than one page number
listed on pages in the 1850-1880 census manuscripts. Sometimes you have to go the previous page. Ideally, the page number on one of those two
pages will match source citation.
However, occasionally there is a discrepancy. And currently the source citation is not
showing the page number. Here are the
rules for taking page numbers in 1850 – 1880:
o
Use the page number from the source citation. If there isn’t one, then…
o
Take the number that is stamped on the page.
o
If the page is blank, take the number that is stamped on the previous page.
o
If there are two handwritten numbers, take the one that is NOT next to the words
“Page Number___.” You might have to turn to the previous page to
find it.
o
If the only page number you can see on your
manuscript page and the previous page
is the one written in next to the words, “Page
Number__,” then take that number.
Children on grid
·
Be sure to put dead children on your grid. For unnamed dead infants in mil info, input
them as:
o
Last name, (dead infant)
o
Mark not searched across the row
·
If it’s just a child with no birth or death
info, you will have to input as Last Name, (Child), and mark him not searched
in any decades prior to the vet’s marriage date and yellow for all other
decades.
·
Remember for Project 2, you can mark all
children in 1850 and 1860 as not searched.
·
Do not
use the 1900 and 1910 census information for living and dead children as the
sole source to add unknown children to the grid.
·
Use your best judgment and add children to grid
if there is evidence of additional children even if you don’t have names or
birth/death dates.
·
FYI: The
1898 family circular did not ask for dead children, but the 1915 circular did
specifically ask for dead children.
Adopted
vs. foster or wards
·
Adopted children are 2 on manuscript with note
in remarks that it is adopted child [Relation: adopted child]. Search for adopted children.
·
Foster and ward should be marked 5
(non-relative) in the screens and non-relative in update relations. Do not search for foster children and wards
(unless their status changes to adopted child or child)
Step Children
·
Search for step children if you determine that
they lived with the veteran for a number of years during childhood, defined as
years prior to age 15. Be sure to
calculate the age when they moved in with the veteran, not just the age they
are when you find them in the census with the veteran. (If you find a 17 year old step child with
the vet in 1900, but you know he married his spouse in 1890, you can assume the
step child has lived with him for 10 years since age 7 and that you therefore
need to search for him in other decades)
·
If several step children live with the vet,
still go by the age rule above. For
example if three step children move in with the vet at ages 17, 13 and 10, you
would only have to look for the 13 and 10 year olds in subsequent decades and
not the 17 year old.
·
Step children, if labeled step on the
manuscript, are entered in screens as a “0.” However, be sure to input them on
the update relations page as children of their birth parent, not as step
children.
·
Remember you do not have to search for the
mother of the vet’s step children if she doesn’t give birth to any children
with the vet.
MilInf? Column
·
Mark this column for anyone you find in the
census that is in mil info. This
includes parents, siblings and people listed in the “Living With” tab.
Death Ranges
·
Even if the dead by date is on the mil info, the
death range in the obit still has to be a QC 3 (not a QC 1 for mil info death
information) because all death ranges
are QC3.
·
You do not need to make a note of the month when
doing a death range from the dead by date in mil info. (This date was the date of the family
circular document.)
Out of Country
·
If there is evidence from the mil info that your
vet has moved out of the country and does not return, you do not have to
continue searching for him. If he moves
with his family out of the country, you do not have to look for his children,
but do search for their death dates.
Mark them not searched for decades when they are living outside the US.
PROJECT 2 ISSUES
Here a few reasons that Project 2 is a
more challenging sample than Project 1.
·
Veterans have lower quality codes to
begin with, some 3’s and 4’s even.
·
Children aren’t always listed in the
mil info
·
There are not as many exact birth dates
in mil info and often no birth dates at all
·
When birth dates are in the mil info,
they don't always seem very accurate. Also, the ages given in the census aren't
very accurate either.
·
There are more children in mil info
listed just as child with no names than there seemed to be in the white
sample.
·
Veterans may have more than one name,
sometimes a slave name then a new name or another alias they go by.
·
Person searched for is often not
head of household but might be living with his spouse as servants in someone
else's household which makes it harder to search using family relationships
·
Sometimes the married couple is not
living together (living in separate households as servants or just living
separately)
·
There are often blurred lines on
marriage, living together, who’s the mother, over lapping spouse dates,
multiple spouses. [Example: Married in 1886 but a couple of children born
before that. (Fausky 9000107141); mil info says married in 1899 but found as single
boarder in 1900 with the eventual spouse(Marshall, 9000107176)]
·
Very few hints are showing up because
there aren’t many family trees for these families on Ancestry
·
Very few Find A Grave records
·
It’s harder to use 1900 and 1910 census
info (from number of living children/number born) to determine estimated death
ranges because it’s harder to trace the living children.
Tips to keep in mind when doing Project 2:
·
Don’t forget to put in M1 or M2 in 1910 for the
vet.
·
Even
though we are not checking the previous work carefully, it’s OK to build your
tree with the veteran’s censuses.
·
Understand that you will have a lot more yellow
on your grid than you are used to. That’s
OK.
·
You’re just not going to find a lot of them, so
give up sooner. If you don’t have enough
to go on and you can’t find any records, it’s ok to give up.
·
Be cautious of taking a guy in 1870 because he’s
the only guy that fits when you have 12 guys the next decade that fit. Where were the other 11 in 1870? They may just not have been enumerated.
·
Because birth dates tend to be less accurate,
use at least a 5 year window or even 10 for
the birth age (or consider searching without age sometimes)
·
There is a wide variation in spelling and names,
so be creative in your searches.
·
Don’t get suckered in to thinking you’ve found
marriage records for your families prior to 1860 in the south. The names may match, but because race isn’t
listed, you may have found others with similar names, likely white. There
weren’t really any decent records in the south for blacks prior to 1865.
·
Quality codes for the vet are based on what is
in the mil info. You may find your vet
with children not listed in the mil info and he’s only a QC3. When you find those kids in their own
households later on, then they can only be QC3.
We are using the QC to say how certain we are that these are the
children of the actual soldier in the mil
info, NOT how sure we are that they are children of the person we found in the census data which
may or may not be the veteran.
However, if you find a good death source
that confirms your QC 3 guys is actually your guy…..(for example, there is a name
of child not found on mil info but on a death cert that is living with your vet
in the QC3 decade, and the death cert
matches the death date on the mil info), then you can make the obit a QC1. The decades still have to have QC’s based on
mil info only, so it would remain a QC3.
Now that the obit positively confirms that the soldier from the QC3
decade is really our guy, you can use it (the obit info) to increase the
quality codes for the children when you find them in their own households. In
other words, you can use other confirmed sources to bump up your QC for the
children, but the vet’s QC has to go by mil info.
·
Don’t get discouraged! If you need a break from Project 2 guys for a
while, intersperse your Project 2 guys with some from Project 1.
Comments that came out of meeting:
·
Input what you see in the manuscript even if
it’s wrong. Make sure the Update
Relations page reflects the accurate relationship. (So if it says head, wife, son, wife, input
what you see even though you know the 2nd wife is really the wife of
the son and not the wife of the head of household)
·
However, keep the egregious error rule for sex
and age. (Example 1: If Maria Susana
says male or a daughter who is male, then leave the sex blank and note in
remarks that it says M but should be F. Example 2: If the census says the head
of household, who is a farmer, is 4 years old, leave the age blank and make a
note in remarks that the age listed was 4 and thus inaccurate.
·
If the supervisor’s district (or any other
information) is crossed off, don’t input it.
It’s ok to be blank if there’s no information to replace what has been
crossed out.
·
For families split on two different pages, take
the page number that links to the URL and the person you searched for.
·
Sometimes two dates are listed on the page under
date of enumeration, and you can see written in the margin where they started
on the 2nd day. Traditionally
we have taken the first day. However,
it is not wrong to take the second date.
You do not need to remark on it in you checks.
·
Make sure Heather gets all your completed trees
and that they’re not getting lost. The
trees are important for what Chris is working on. He is trying to adjust the screens and create
a GEDCOM uploader that takes data from the trees to automatically fill the
screens and save us time in inputting.
·
Shared trees will disappear from your shared
list if the owner of the tree deletes them from Ancestry. You can delete trees yourself
by going to Manage Trees, then Trees Shared With Me and clicking Remove from
list
·
Don’t rule out white people when searching for
Project 2 people. Open the manuscript to
look at it. Occasionally we have found
that Mulattos are indexed as W even though it clearly says M. Some WWI and WWII
draft cards show blacks listed as white.
·
Don’t spend a lot time doublechecking vet’s work
in Project 2. Make sure the right
decades are chosen. No finds have been checked and re checked. If you find someone better, by all means
replace the old data.
·
For obits if only the county is listed, and
you’re positive what the state is, you can include the state.
·
To get the source citation page number, click on
“view record” to get to the preview page, not the manuscript image, and look
for the source citation information in the fine print at the bottom.
