Nerdy Confession

I love indexing! There, I said it. Whew! ;)

For those thoroughly confused right now, indexing is when you take images of old records (censuses, birth/marriage/death certificates, ship passenger lists, etc) and type out the info so that it can be searched by those doing their family history. Before indexing you would have to get rolls of microfiche and scroll through them until your eyes felt like they were going to fall out of your head, and hope you found the information you were looking for. (Yeah, I did that exactly once.) After something is indexed you should be able to type in a name, for example, have it pop right up for you.

I started indexing last year after reading an article about it in our church magazine (Mormons are well known for being genealogy-happy) and checking out the website. As of today, I've indexed 10,659 names! It's probably more than that, because I've done quite a few records that had more than one name on it (like a marriage record that's got the bride and groom as well as their parents' info). A couple of weeks ago I got an email from the site inviting me to be an arbitrator...each record is indexed by 2 different people, and the arbitrator goes through any discrepancies and picks the correct information. I have to admit, my inner nerd was pretty stoked to be given arbitrator status. So far I've arbitrated 150 records...sometimes it's really hard to figure out which interpretation of the info is correct, but I'm doing my best with it.

It's pretty interesting to read the old records and learn a bit about the past. The death records make me glad I live in the 21st century...even 70 or 80 years ago people died of seemingly benign things ALL the time. The romantic in me wonders if the people who filled out those 100 year old marriage certificates stayed together all of their lives. It surprised me as well to see the number of women in their late 30's and up getting married for the first time...I always thought back in the day you were a confirmed spinster by the age of 23! I've seen plenty of interesting names - one 19th century black family in the deep south gave all of their sons occupation names: Doctor, Judge, etc. Sometimes I even Wiki the places on the records...I did a bunch of death records for what turned out to be a TB hospital somewhere in the southern states. I looked it up and found a picture of the place - it was pretty much the creepiest looking building ever.

So yeah, I may not be doing *my* family history (kind of at an impasse on that one right now) but at least I'm helping others do theirs...and satisfying my inner nerdiness at the same time. Win win!

Another quick preschool update...I hosted for our co-op preschool for the first time today! We learned about Thanksgiving - we ran around pretending to be turkeys and made a turkey centerpiece out of a lunch bag and some construction paper. Emmett still wasn't sure about things, even though we were hosting this week - I think the word "preschool" still has negative connotations for him. He freaked out while we were pretending to be turkeys, which didn't surprise me (he is really weird about pretending to be animals), but I'm trying to teach him that we do a variety of stuff at preschool so there is something for everyone and it's not just things HE wants to do all the time. He actually did most of his turkey craft, which pleasantly surprised me, and he did a fantastic job sharing his toys with the other kids. Oh, and he went nutso for the animal crackers we had for snack, surprise surprise. ;) All in all a successful morning!