Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 8

I'm moving kind of slow today. I attended the Northern Utah Genealogy Family Heritage Jamboree in Ogden yesterday and boy was I wiped out. I had a long nap and then got up to do my FamilySearch Indexing.

I didn't want anything too challenging so I decided to pick the Salt Lake County Births to index, but it was already finished. I looked over the projects and noticed there were several for the 1930 Mexico census. I have to confess they made me a little nervous - I don't read Spanish. I saw my Tennessee 1900 census still available but I felt if I picked it I was admitting myself to much of a coward to try something Spanish. Soooooo, I had a dilemma facing me. I decided to throw the dice and let the system pick something for me. Then I chuckle to myself because I felt like a gambler using FamilySearch as my roulette wheel! I held my breath and waited for the results. What did I get, was I going to see Tennessee again, did it even want me, it didn't last week. How about Spanish will it be hard to read? Finally the decision is made for me and it is - 1900 U.S. Census for KANSAS. Surprise, Surprise.

The page is beautiful and bright and so easy to read. But wait, where is the highlighter? I fiddle with buttons and nope it doesn't want to show no matter what I do. I finally decide to start indexing without it and I discover the first person is the wife and has no last name. That means I have to go back a page and locate it. I take a peek the name is Calking, return to the page to index and enter it. As if like magic the now missing highlight has appeared. I adjust the highlight some and I am off and running.

It is totally amazing how quickly you can do indexing when you have a clear page and neat handwriting. My people are of German descent. Out of 50 people only 6 don't have either themselves, or their parents born in Germany. I actually got to fill out the immigration field. There are even two families that have my family names. One was Harris - and he was born in Germany - didn't know any Harris' came from Germany. My line comes from England. The other one was Backhaus she was a boarder with another German family. She happened to be born in Kansas, but both parents are born in Germany. My Backhaus' are from Germany - not really blood relations because it's my 6th great-grandmother's second husband. But he matters to me!

There was one little treasure on my page. I could make out a nice extended family. There was a mother-in-law listed so I now knew the maiden name of the wife. The family living next to them had the mother-in-law's same last name so it must of been her son. She had to of been widowed, gave the farm to the son and went to live with her daughter. I don't know that but it sure would be good clues for whoever discovers they are related to that family. Just goes to show you how important it is to look at the neighbors when you find your family in the census. You just might find others related to you. This project is such a good one for people to start learning how to do genealogy with.

Yesterday at the Genealogy Jamboree I listened to Rich Running speak on opening the Granite Mountain Vault. He said we now have 85,000 volunteer indexers worldwide. Last month we indexed 27 million names. We are averaging 1.25 million names indexed a day. They figure in three years they will have 1/2 a million indexers working on this project.

With my calculation that would make 85,000 indexers, indexing about 15 people each a day. I guess I am still on track then. I indexed 50 people today making a grand total of 474 people indexed in 8 weeks. Ok, maybe that is not to impressive. But I bet it would take a new indexer a whole day or more of indexing to beat my record! I might be moving at a turtle's pace but at least I am moving.

See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!