Research diligence
After helping some friends research their own family lines this weekend, I was reminded of the importance of diligence in our searches!
Genealogical researchers rely heavily on indexes for vital records and censuses and hardly ever even give them a second thought as we cruise through where the ancestors should/might be at a given historical time and in a specific geographic location. When we don't find them where we expect them to be, we recheck our research assumptions and the source(s) of that information for credibility. But remember that the margin for error in indexing can be quite large and usually, with "Murphy's Law for Genealogists" working for me (or is that against me?!), my ancestors aren't on the index, apparently not living where I thought they would be or even where I absolutely KNEW they lived.
After accessing one of the online census indexes this weekend, I couldn't find a specific family but felt confident they should be there. I went online and looked at the original census records and let me tell you, the bottom quarter of each page was black and smudged and pretty much unreadable, making it impossible for the indexer(s) to complete their task as well. Sometimes the microfilmed copy didn't get proper lighting and whole families are unreadable. The moral of the story is: families were missed by the census takers, names can't always be read by indexers, best guesses on surname spellings can be way off the mark, human error by the indexer could have missed your family, so it is a very good idea to check the original yourself when in doubt, so you don't create an unneccesary brickwall.
Genealogical researchers rely heavily on indexes for vital records and censuses and hardly ever even give them a second thought as we cruise through where the ancestors should/might be at a given historical time and in a specific geographic location. When we don't find them where we expect them to be, we recheck our research assumptions and the source(s) of that information for credibility. But remember that the margin for error in indexing can be quite large and usually, with "Murphy's Law for Genealogists" working for me (or is that against me?!), my ancestors aren't on the index, apparently not living where I thought they would be or even where I absolutely KNEW they lived.
After accessing one of the online census indexes this weekend, I couldn't find a specific family but felt confident they should be there. I went online and looked at the original census records and let me tell you, the bottom quarter of each page was black and smudged and pretty much unreadable, making it impossible for the indexer(s) to complete their task as well. Sometimes the microfilmed copy didn't get proper lighting and whole families are unreadable. The moral of the story is: families were missed by the census takers, names can't always be read by indexers, best guesses on surname spellings can be way off the mark, human error by the indexer could have missed your family, so it is a very good idea to check the original yourself when in doubt, so you don't create an unneccesary brickwall.
posted by Susan | 8:39 AM
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