1940 US Census Indexing!



I have avoided the genealogy "bug" and been a big fan and cheerleader of my sister, Nancy, who has worked on our family line extensively as have hundreds of unknown relatives.  Not having a clue where to start or feeling for a moment that my novice attempts would uncover a distant relative's name that "professionals" have never been able to find, has left me a litte disinterested in the hobby that so many find addicting.

Over the Easter vacation this year, Mindy and David told me of the huge Idaho and churchwide effort involving thousands of people who are indexing records at a furious rate so that they can be available to family search enthusiasts free of charge through the church.  At some pending date these records will only be available through Ancestry.com at a yearly fee.    This sounded like something I could DO!

I tend to have a little obsessive compulsive strain running through me that through the years has left me with huge amounts of fabric, rubber stamps (for scrapbooking), and dish sets, and candles..., but this sounded like a compulsion that would be worthwhile and free and genealogy related!

I began two weeks ago, indexing World War 1 registrants, and now "all of us indexers" are working on the 1940 U.S. Census. The state censuses come up by "highest priority" (the earliest deadlines), but I especially enjoyed indexing a record or two from Oregon.  I feel that I am often aided in understanding and reading the handwritten records and also feel blessed to have an IPAD right next to my computer to help me look up counties, etc., that I just can't read.  Yesterday while indexing a Maine census,  I was trying to decipher a last name that looked like S U U U T.  Well, what kind of a name is that? I tried typing it a number of ways but nothing looked right. Finally I figured it out the best I could and thought to look it up on Dex in Maine to see if there was anyone there by that name....boom! In a split second, up came the name of the 4 year old daughter, Etta, on my census record.  She would be 76 now!  I thought that was very COOL and exciting!

When I started indexing, 10 million names had already been done.  And in the two weeks following, the number jumped to over 20 million.  It's astounding!  I'm happy to have added almost 2400 names in two weeks!  We'll see how far this new compulsion takes me!  Very fun!