When we were in Utah in January, I was having a conversation with my Brother-in-law Heath. Heath is a Family Historian extraordinaire. He is so good that he gets paid for helping the church find new and improved ways to do Family History. I was lamenting the fact that at my stage in life, I just don't have the time or resources to do what needs to be done with my family history, but that I feel guilty for doing nothing. He told me about FamilySearch Indexing. The church has set up a site where you can, from the comfort of your own home, transcribe census records into the church indexing database. I was so excited! They have scanned in the images of the original records, and then you just punch in the information right into corresponding fields. I signed up last night, got my registration approved today, and I transcribed my first batch tonight after Clark went to bed and Tanner was playing basketball. It was names from the 1900 census in Chicago, Illinois. As I was doing it, I kept having memory flashbacks of watching my mom in a small room in the Crawley Chapel in England transcribing census records into a computer from an already transcribed paper version of the record. It is amazing how far technology has come...and from some of the things Heath has told me, it is only going to get more amazing. I forgot how much I love doing Family History, even when it isn't my own personal family lines. In the batch I did tonight, most were families that had emigrated from Russia and Romania to the United States and then settled in Chicago. I love thinking and imagining what their lives must have been like. There is so much you can learn from just names, dates, and places. I love it!
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Family Search Indexing
When we were in Utah in January, I was having a conversation with my Brother-in-law Heath. Heath is a Family Historian extraordinaire. He is so good that he gets paid for helping the church find new and improved ways to do Family History. I was lamenting the fact that at my stage in life, I just don't have the time or resources to do what needs to be done with my family history, but that I feel guilty for doing nothing. He told me about FamilySearch Indexing. The church has set up a site where you can, from the comfort of your own home, transcribe census records into the church indexing database. I was so excited! They have scanned in the images of the original records, and then you just punch in the information right into corresponding fields. I signed up last night, got my registration approved today, and I transcribed my first batch tonight after Clark went to bed and Tanner was playing basketball. It was names from the 1900 census in Chicago, Illinois. As I was doing it, I kept having memory flashbacks of watching my mom in a small room in the Crawley Chapel in England transcribing census records into a computer from an already transcribed paper version of the record. It is amazing how far technology has come...and from some of the things Heath has told me, it is only going to get more amazing. I forgot how much I love doing Family History, even when it isn't my own personal family lines. In the batch I did tonight, most were families that had emigrated from Russia and Romania to the United States and then settled in Chicago. I love thinking and imagining what their lives must have been like. There is so much you can learn from just names, dates, and places. I love it!
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2 comments:
that would be MY daughter!
Good for you! I'm glad you were able to get it set up. That's awesome!
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