[or-roots] more census whining

[glenkc7mbm at comcast.net]

You find a lot of transcription errors on the Census's, and I have also found many of my relatives listed with a nickname or with their middle name and it is only after looking at all the household names listed that I could determine it was the person I was looking for, and in some cases going to the original image of the census. 

Glen Portland 



----- Original Message ----- 
From: ilightle2 at hotmail.com 
To: "or-roots mail list" <or-roots at listsmart.osl.state.or.us> 
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 2:25:57 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: Re: [or-roots] more census whining 

I transcribe census records for Family Search and being familiar with older 
penmanship styles and looking for other words containing the letter I think 
I'm looking at are helpful. Probably the thing that helps the most is being 
able to do a whole block of census pages by the same enumerator - you get 
familiar with one persons handwriting. Picking regions, where the population 
is of an extraction similar to your own is a big help. I usually have 
several states to pick from and I choose accordingly to play into my 
strengths. Not everyone is diligent about accuracy and may just be going for 
the count assuming someone else will resolve the discrepancy. Volunteers are 
still the most accurate and dedicated, in my opinion, especially if they're 
into tracing family lines themselves. (should be a job prerequisite) 

What I find frustrating is when I run across errors after it goes public and 
they don't get fixed or can't get fixed any time soon. When the indexing is 
at the state level and for an early census, a note can be tacked to the 
file. The scope of doing each census gets mindboggling. How many volunteer 
hours does it take using an average of 250 records a week, done twice 
independently, crossmatched by computer and then kicked over to yet another 
volunteer who decides for version A or B or supplies a version C. That's 
Family Search's way, I don't know about others. I've looked at volunteering 
to index in my states of interest (out of state for me) and there doesn't 
seem to be a vehicle for getting the images easily - that's where your 
in-state is best. 

My pet whine: I have a relative who's give name has shown up as J., J.R., J. 
Roy, James R., James, Jay & Jas. Thank goodness the last name isn't Smith. 
No mistakes, just a head banger, since he moved around in 4 states. Wonder 
if he was part of the Witness Protection Program (just kidding). 

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