Family Search Indexing

Just thought I would jot down a little something about my latest obsession. We had a YW night where a return Sister Missionary from Temple Square came and taught us about family history and the need the church has for indexing names. It looked fun and it was a good way for me to fill my time with some service and help others do their family history since I haven't started mine yet. Baby steps! Anyway I came home and signed up and downloaded the software and got rolling. My first batch of 50 names took the longest just because of the learning curve and trying to decipher handwriting. Most of them I can just roll through now and I can keep a pretty good rhythm when there is legible handwriting. I do slow down when I get drawn in by the potential story that is there. It ranges anywhere from girls getting married at 16 which most of those were black females to quite a few 30 year old single white males and females. Some families had all their adult kids in 20's and 30's still living at home and single. Some huge age differences again mostly in the black (I will not use African American because the race is technically black)race with 16 year old girls marrying 60 year old men. The census was also used to track number of children born to a mother and the number of living children. This one always gets me sad. There was almost always never the same amount born to living. One woman went from 11 to 3 and then there were quite a few couples that had been married for 20-30 years never having had any children. This last one I did was crazy. They were all immigrants from Japan to Montana or somewhere (I can't remember because I never had to type it). Anyway the "Head" of the household was a 26year old man and 49 other immigrants were "boarders" at the same address. There could have been more, but that was all that was on my page. That gets you wondering. The ages varied mostly in the teens and 20's with the occasional 50 year old. That gets the old imagination flowing wondering what they were doing there. Why such a large group had hooked up. Did they come over together, they must have because they all had only been in the states for 3 months, so what were there plans? What ended up happening to them? I also got to do some Land Warrants and Revolutionary War pensions from the 1700's and birth certificates from Salt Lake for 1900. The birth certificates fascinated me because a good portion of the births were done by a physician in a hospital and not as many were done by midwives in the home. I don't know when I thought the hospital birth was introduced, but I guess I didn't think it was in 1910.

So, does this have anyone interested? If so, go to http://www.familysearchindexing.com/ and sign up. The cool thing is is that anyone can do it and you don't have to worry about not being able to read the handwriting. You do the page of 50 names and someone else does that same page and then another person looks at the 2 and makes the final call, so there is really nothing to fear. I mean I guess you could get an email saying that you are so terrible at it that we want you to stop, but I'm not thinking it is possible to be that bad. I have indexed 718 names so far and I hope to make it to 1000 before my surgery. It is probably a long shot since my week is crazy busy, but I figure that I will aim high and see what happens. I figure with all 4 of the kids out of the house on Tues and Thurs morning it is a wise use of my time so that I don't take up shopping as a hobby. :)