Monday, May 26, 2008

Adventures in FamilySearch Indexing - Week 44

It looks like there was a problem with FamilySearch Indexing this past week.
From: Headquarters
Subject: Technical Issues
Date: 20 May 2008

Due to an unexpected air conditioning malfunction, the servers that hold most of the indexing images shut down last night. We are aware of the situation and are working as quickly as possible to restore the system. You may still be able to index some batches and submit them during this time.

It may take a couple of days for the system to completely recover. We will continue to update the FamilySearch indexing home page, www.familysearchindexing.org, as we have more information. Please check there often.
I didn't notice any problem when I did my indexing on Sunday so all must be well now. I was just so tired after doing a batch of the Louisiana 1850-1945 Death Certificates that I didn't feel up to writing my article yesterday. I only indexed 20 names too. There is a lot of jumping around indexing those death certificates. It sure wasn't as easy to index them as it was doing my Irish Vital Records. It appears that the Irish Vital Records project is completed now. Since there wasn't any New York projects I wasn't sure what to index. It's kind of hard to see a project you are working on get completed, but I'm sure I will find a new one to get interested in instead.

I do have to say that Death Certificates are very interesting. Even though you don't need to index the cause of death I always take a look at it. My husband got to hear the cause of death for all 20 of the people I indexed last night, even if he wanted to know it or not. I was kind of surprised at how many people had parents by the name of "Don't Know". I could just imagine the excitement a researcher would have finally finding a grandparent's death certificate and bam the person giving the information on the death certificate didn't even know their parent's name. I would hold the other information on the death certificate as suspect if they didn't know the person's parents names.

There was a 2 month old baby that I indexed in my batch. Cause of death - died in their sleep. How sad. I could just feel for the baby's parents. I also indexed an infant that lived 30 minutes. It was a premature baby estimated at 7 months gestation. I wasn't sure how to index the age on that one since it wasn't even a day old. I just left the field blank. I don't recall the oldest of the individuals I indexed but I do remember I indexed a 45 yr old man that died by being crushed to death in an auto accident. It listed all the bones broken. Very gruesome. With all I take in about the people while I index is it any wonder it takes me so long to index just a few names!

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

2 comments:

Christie said...

I just did those death records yesterday. They really are difficult, but I just kept reminding myself how happy I've been to have the Ohio death certificates online. In working on a distant line (using the Ohio death certificates in Record Search) I found a 7 month gestation baby who lived 3 hours. That really hit me because I have a 10 month old 30 weeker...born on the SAME day and month! If I had lived then I would have a death certificate instead of a baby nursing to sleep as I type with one hand. I found out all I could on the family and put them in nFS. The baby was born within the last 95 years, but I'll be watching and if that work isn't done in a few years when that's past I'll make sure it gets done. (They are related, but distantly.)

Anonymous said...

I've been working on the Louisiana death certificates for several months, and I, too, have had many emotional moments. A father and young son both dying in a house fire made me wonder if the father was trying unsuccessfully to rescue his son.

But on a more practical note, when there is a baby that only lived hours or minutes, you record the age as "1 day."