Archive for April, 2012

Surname Forum Activity
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The Joseph Manley who was the son of William and Elizabeth Manley of Laurens county, SC married Margaret Hardy Wilson (Peggy) on 12-20-1804 in Laurens county. They later moved to Monroe county, MS.
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Surname Forum Activity
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News from around the web.
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It’s our number one question on the blog, to our member services agents, on Facebook, everywhere: Why can’t I search by name in my ancestor’s state in the 1940 census yet?

Seems like we should have an easy answer for it, and we do – because it takes time. But that answer resonates about as well as “because I said so” did when you were a kid. So we feel there’s a better (but longer) answer that explains more.

It goes like this: making family history records searchable online is one of those anomalous endeavors today that still requires people, not machines, to get things done. You need eyes on a page, fingers on a keyboard, brains to review and check everything and someone to push the final button and say “okay.”

During the first five days that we had the 1940 census, we placed all 3.8 million census pages, a.k.a. census images, online, allowing people to browse through enumeration districts to find family members. It’s the old-fashioned way of researching, much like using microfilm and it’s not ideal. But we wanted to ensure you had access to the records as quickly as possible, all while we were working on the ideal situation – a fully indexed, name-searchable 1940 U.S. Census.

So while those images were being loaded online, they were also being delivered to Ancestry.com indexers, who immediately dove in and started transcribing the words and names and marks and codes on each page.

For numbers people, consider this: each one of those 3.8 million images or pages can hold up to 40 people. Each of those 40 people can have more than 30 boxes of information associated with him/her. Two lucky people on each page will also have extra information included about them totaling another 15 boxes of information. While not every box will be transcribed, or as we call it “keyed,” most will.

Information on the 1940 census is handwritten, somewhat freeform, in the individual census taker’s own unique script. Unfortunately, that cursive can’t effectively be processed by machine. So each page is handed to a person who manually types in details. Some fields are more complex than others: names vary, birthplaces aren’t limited to just 50 states and sometimes what’s written is in desperate need of deciphering.

After all of the information on a census page is keyed, it goes through a series of quality assurance (QA), reviews and spot checks. Errors on the page kick that page back through the keying process; in other words someone takes another pass through that page and the process starts all over again.

Combined, these processes create an index of the information on that page, a searchable database of specific information plucked out of the historical record. Once this index passes its QA tests, additional steps are taken to ensure that the database works correctly within the Ancestry.com environment – this includes its connectivity to and coordination with our search engine and other historical records and integration into our family tree Hints system, so we can notify you when we find your family member in this new collection, too. Before pushing the index and images live on the Ancestry.com site, names must be linked to appropriate census images and the whole system is tested once again. Once these final tests are passed, the index goes live, allowing you to search by name.

Now, all of this detail begs another question: why isn’t that thoroughly indexed, checked, scanned, reviewed and OK-d page immediately placed online solo?

This one is a little tougher to answer.

Our decision was and still is to launch each state index from the 1940 census at the time the state’s index is 100 percent complete. It was a tough decision to make but one we feel confident about (trust us, the decision was arrived at after plenty of spirited debate). In the end, we opted to launch state-by-state indexes rather than indexes for smaller areas because of two key factors:

1. Partial indexes may be difficult to use and frustrating. Say, for example, the District of Columbia has a searchable index consisting of only 8 percent of DC’s population. You search it and don’t find your relative. Does that mean he or she wasn’t living there? If that 8 percent covers portions of various enumeration districts in no particular order, even covering just small parts of a street, the challenge is even greater for a researcher. Until the whole state is finished, there’s virtually no way of knowing if your relative’s home has been indexed yet.
2. Full state indexes actually speed up the process of getting the entire 1940 U.S. Census online. Taking a grouped approach allows us to deliver a name-searchable 1940 index to you more quickly than if we launched single indexed pages at a time. Each state you’ll search through in the interim will be complete – not partial. When it’s all said and done, you’ll be able to search by name in every U.S. census sooner rather than later at Ancestry.com, from 1940 all the way back to 1790. Follow your family back decade by decade. Guaranteed amazing.

The waiting, however, is the hardest part. At this point in the process, we’re transcribing, indexing, checking and processing every state that hasn’t been fully indexed yet as well as all U.S. territories included in the 1940 census. We’re also reviewing and fixing images that we received from the National Archives and finalizing our new interactive image viewer technology so that over the next few months, you’ll be able to see all of those answers from 1940 clearly, the way the census should be read.

So here’s our promise to you. We anticipate our next indexed location to be ready very soon. After that, we’ll deliver another state; then we’ll start launching state indexes a few at a time. Unfortunately, we can’t say which state will be ready first or next or even pin a date on when a specific state – including the one you really want to search – will be fully indexed.

We can tell you that each one will be worth the wait.

News from around the web.
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If you’re like me, the 1940 census was full of surprises—like my own parents not living where they were supposed to be living. Enter U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 (Beta).

We’ve had city directories on the site for years. They can be a great source for names, addresses, and occupations. They’re printed more often than censuses. And they can give you a feel for a time and place, with maps, clubs and churches, and ads for local businesses (apparently in my home town, ice cream was health food back in 1946—so long as it was Brown’s).

 

 

1 Billion (Better) Records

But if City Directories were great records before, they’re downright indispensable now. Over the last year, we have been running our U.S. directories through a new process similar to the one we used to create indexes for our U.S. School Yearbooks collection. The results: over 1 billion records with a better, more accurate index, more names, and more matches turning up when you search.

Matches like my grandmother, Mabel C. Stoddard—living in Rexburg in 1939, instead of Plano, where my mother was born.

 

 

With the cross streets, I’ll be able to narrow down the enumeration district and find my mother’s family in the 1940 census. (And apparently listing yourself as a widow after a divorce hadn’t gone out of fashion—though that’s another story.)

 

Finding Family

I know my grandmother  moved to Ogden, Utah, later. I don’t have access to the 1950 census, of course (another 10-year wait), but directories can give me an idea of when the family headed south. A search for my grandmother in Ogden in 1950, +/- 10 years, brings up the first hit in 1952.

 

 

Checking the browse tells me that we have directories for Ogden for 1944, 1946, 1948, and 1951, which makes a move sometime around 1952 likely. (My mother shows up herself two years later, complete with occupation: a clerk at the credit bureau.)

Put Directories to Work

If you haven’t searched U.S. City Directories lately, you could be in for a treat—or maybe even a feast. And don’t let the “Beta” throw you. It just means we’re adding even more improvements to the collection.

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“Hitler tried to kill me. I’m still alive. He’s dead”.

Israel Arbeiter, the author of those words, turned 87 within the past week. If you had asked him in 1939 whether he would have lived this long he would have said “unlikely”.

When the Germans marched into his city of Plonsk, Poland 73 years ago Izzy Arbeiter’s life became more complicated. The middle of five boys, Arbeiter, like most Jews in Poland, hoped for the best, but had an uneasy feeling they may be in for the worst.

There were rumors already floating around about deportations and camps where Jews and other “non-desirables” were being taken, but that was just talk on the street. It couldn’t be true. Taken from their homes, their possessions stolen, families torn apart just because of their faith?

Israel Arbeiter’s parents and youngest brother were eventually sent to the death camp at Treblinka, where they were gassed and cremated. Another brother simply disappeared. He may have lived. He may have died. No one knows. Izzy Arbeiter and one other brother survived.  They lived because they were young and strong and would make excellent slave-laborers for the Nazi war machine.

Israel Arbeiter’s Holocaust journey took him through various slave-labor camps and eventually to the worst camp of them all, Auschwitz, where over one million died.

Beginning next week, Israel Arbeiter will make his final trip back to Poland from his home in the United States and re-trace his Holocaust footsteps. He will begin in his home city of Plonsk. A place where he saw his parents and younger brother for the final time. He will visit the camp where they were killed and the various slave camps where the Nazi’s did all they could to to break his will and spirit. He will walk through the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau and relive memories that most of us just can’t dream up, even in our worst nightmares. He will reflect on the tattoo that still marks him as a victim and a survivor of Auschwitz: A18651.

Arbeiter will end his journey in Germany, where he found freedom as the war ended in Europe, just as the Nazi’s were planning to kill him and other survivors to keep their crimes against humanity hidden. Germany is also where he met his future bride, another Holocaust survivor.

Also on this trip, Israel Arbeiter will search for religious artifacts hastily buried under the dirt floor of a basement the day the Germans entered Plonsk, Poland. Items his family didn’t want the Nazi’s to find and destroy.

He will hold these religious symbols for the first time in 73 years. He will wipe the decades old dirt from them and see his past. Items that once belonged to his family and now all he has left of their life prior to September 1st, 1939, the day the Nazi’s marched into Poland. Israel Arbeiter is about to embark on a journey that has to be seen to be believed and we would like you to come along.

We hope you will join us here on Ancestry.com’s blog page beginning on April 23rd as the World War II Foundation documents daily, in video and words, Izzy Arbeiter’s journey home as part of a larger documentary film project, Prisoner A18651 which will debut in the fall of 2012.

To learn more about Israel Arbeiter in a short narrative voiced by Hollywood icon Dan Aykroyd, please visit the following link: http://youtu.be/C5ZDmGiJohM

 

 

This blog post is courtesy of Tim Gray, who is Chairman of the non-profit WWII Foundation. To learn more about the WWII Foundation and to donate to their projects, which preserve the stories of the World War II generation, please visit www.wwiifoundation.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News from around the web.
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Anna and Joe Dansbury

William Dansbury’s first wife died in 1938, leaving him with three small children. By 1942 he married his first wife’s cousin, my grandmother, Anna Steffes, and had another baby boy. I’m not exactly sure how quickly he remarried but 1940 is a critical year. Were they married yet? Or was my grandmother still working as a teacher?  By some standards she was a bit of an old maid. Anna was born in 1907 so by 1938 she was already 31 years old. I know almost nothing about her life before she was married. She was the oldest of ten children. She considered joining a convent at one point. Anna was deeply religious and went to church every day until she was in her late eighties.

The 1940 census will tell me about how William was managing his young family. Did his mother Ellen move in to help him? How long was he single?

William died in 1946 leaving Anna a widow with three step-children and three young children of her own.  I’ll never know how she managed it!  I’m not sure when he bought the house my father grew up in but the family remained in the same neighborhood for 60 years.  I can read about William in the local newspaper because he was a policeman. Someone who worked for the local paper must have lived nearby because the boys are mentioned in the paper frequently.

But Anna isn’t mentioned at all. I think she was too busy working to go to parties or school events. I’d like to find out if Anna was still living with her parents in 1940 and helping with the younger children, or if she is a new bride living with William and his three children.

Laura Dansbury, Ancestry.com Director, Product Management

News from around the web.
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• Military records subscription site Fold3 has added records
  relating to the Sultana disaster. That’s the steamboat whose boilers exploded
  April 27, 1865, killing 1,700 (mostly Civil War Union soldiers recently released from
  Confederate POW camps). The ship was carrying 2,200 passengers—far more than the 376
  she was built for. Records include lists of former prisoners who survived and those
  who died. The records are free
  to search, at least for the time being.

• The Center for Jewish History (CJH)
  has announced a partnership with Jewish genealogy expert Miriam Weiner’s Routes
  to Roots Foundation (RTRF). CJH will incorporate RTRF’s Eastern European Archival
  Database and Image Database into its online catalog, expanding access to genealogy
  resources from Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. Weiner will serve
  as senior advisor for genealogy services at CJH’s Ackman
  & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute.

• Besides adding 1940 census records and coordinatng the 1940 Census Community Project,
  FamilySearch has continued adding other records to the free FamilySearch.org.
  The new resources include seignorial records from the Czech Republic; city records
  from Nördlingen, Bavaria, Germany; church records from Estonia, Portugal and Slovakia;
  and marriages from New Jersey. See
  the updated colelctions and click through to them here.

• Remember to watch “Finding
  Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on PBS, which
  will feature actors Robert Downey Jr. and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The European-immigrant
  stories in both stars’ pasts are common to many Americans.

• NBC’s “Who
  Do You Think You Are?” tonight will repeat the popular Reba McEntire episode.
  Next Friday will be an all-new episode featuring actor Rob Lowe.

News from around the web.
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When I heard Minnesota described as a “meaty” state for genealogy research, I couldn’t
resist asking local expert Paula
Stuart-Warren for sneak peeks at what she’ll cover in our upcoming Minnesota
Genealogy Crash Course webinar.

Here’s what Paula sent:

• Your ancestor wasn’t a U.S. citizen in 1918? There might be a two-page Minnesota record
  with his her name, date and place of birth, residence, occupation, names of children
  and relatives, arrival in the United States and more. And it’s indexed.

• How many avenues are there to locate a birth, death or marriage record? We’ll count
  the multiple ways.

• Military service from Minnesota? You’ll learn about the state’s special questionnaires
  and bonus applications for the 19th and 20th century.

• Need a wedding story, business ad, obituary, or other newspaper item? Learn the best
  place to obtain these.

• Census indexes? Are there more for Minnesota than other states? Hmmm…

• What’s the largest ethnic group in Minnesota? (It might not be the one that immediately
  springs to mind.)

• Are there really 10,000 lakes?

• What do genealogy, baseball, Prairie Home Companion, the Minnesota State Fair, WCCO
  Radio, and the Lennon sisters all have in common?

Well, now I’m getting really curious! The Minnesota
Genealogy Crash Course webinar with Paula Stuart-Warren is next Wednesday, April
25, at 8 p.m.

And when you register
for the Minnesota webinar at ShopFamilyTree.com, you’ll get a free download of
the Minnesota chapter of our Family Tree Sourcebook.

Find
out more about the Minnesota Genealogy Crash Course here.

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Subscription genealogy website Archives.com has
formed a partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA) to digitize and index 1,000 reels of the church’s microfilm
containing millions of the church’s baptism, confirmation, marriage, and funeral records.

The parish register ledger books document Lutheran congregations throughout the United
States from 1793 to 1940.

The records will become available at Archives.com later this year. I’m crossing my
fingers it’ll be in time for our guide to genealogy research in Lutheran records,
which will be in the July/August 2012 Family Tree Magazine.

The guide is part of our new religious records series, which so far has covered Catholic
(in the March/April
2012 Family Tree Magazine) and Jewish (in the May/June
2012 Family Tree Magazine) genealogy research.

See
the full announcement about Lutheran records on Archives.com here.

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using the help in our Family
Tree Land Records Research Value Pack.


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