Planning for my visit to Dodge County, Wisconsin

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On our Midwest vacation in September, I plan to visit Dodge County, Wisconsin to search for records pertaining to two of my ancestral families - the Devier J. Lanphear Smith family, the Samuel Vaux family, and any Lanphear families.  They both owned land in Burnett township in Dodge County, according to the 1860 plat map I have of Burnett and Oak Grove townships. 

My goals in Dodge County are:

1)  Visit the Ranslow Smith home location:

As I noted in The Four-Mile House of Ranslow Smith in January 2008, and in Santa comes early - what a gift! in December 2007, Ranslow Smith (1805-1875) built the Four-Mile House in Rolling Prairie (a village in southern Burnett township), and this is where his adopted son grew up.  The restored Four-Mile House is now located at Old World Wisconsin, near Eagle, and I plan to visit there also on this trip.  I described the 40-page portion of a larger typescript, commissioned by Old World Wisconsin, in the earlier post.  This typescript has maps of Burnett township showing the location of three Smith homes, including Ranslow Smith's, plus a small plat map of Rolling Prairie showing the exact location of the Four-Mile House in 1860.  This small plat map shows the Hotel at the southwest corner of Beaver Dam Road and Smith Street (the street running north-south named Watertown Road in the 1873 plat map).  I don't have digital images of these maps for my use, so I will scan them on Sunday at Scanfest.

The image below is from Google Maps satellite view of the area:

From my evaluation, I think that the typescript indicates that the Four-Mile House was located on the southwest corner at the intersection of County Road 1 (running vertically on the map above, on the left of the image) and Prospect Road (the horizontal road about 35% of the way up the image, just above the railroad that runs nearly horizontally at the bottom of the picture).  I think those roads used to be Beaver Dam Road and Smith Street on the 1860 plat map.

Obviously, the Four-Mile House is not there any longer, but I still want to visit the site as best I can.

2)  Cemetery Visits

I went looking in Find-a-Grave for Smith and Vaux persons buried in cemeteries near Burnett.  I found Ranslow's wife Mary Smith, Devier's adoptive mother, and Walter T. Vaux, a nephew of Samuel Vaux, buried in Burnett Corners Cemetery several miles north of their homesteads.  I printed out the pages for the cemetery, which has a map and directions to the cemetery.  I also captured images of the gravestones and entered the source into my RootsMagic database.

3)  Local Newspapers

What newspapers were published in Dodge county, Wisconsin in the 1840 to 1870 time period?  I went to the Library of Congress Chronicling America website and clicked on their link for "Search U.S. NewspaperDirectory, 1690 to Present" and found 29 newspapers that published in that time frame.  Here's a screen capture of the first 20:

From this, I can determine which newspapers were published for specific dates in specific places.  Unfortunately, the Chronicling America site does not have any newspapers digitized in Wisconsin yet.

How do I find if these newspapers are available in a library or archive, and where are they located?

I went to the Dodge County, Wisconsin USGenWeb site (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~widodge/) and they had a link for "Dodge County Newspapers."  What a wonderful resource!  This lists the newspapers published in the county history, the issues available, and the location of print or microfilm pages, and if indexes are available.

Likely candidates include:

*  Beaver Dam Argus - English language paper: 7 Dec 1860 - 12 Jul 1956.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is indexed, though the index is not on microfilm, but in book form at the library.

*  Dodge County Citizen - English language paper: 10 Apr 1856 - 16 Apr 1924.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is partially indexed.

*  Republican & Sentinel - (English language?) paper: 10 Feb 1853 - 5 Mar 1857.
Microfilm available from the Beaver Dam Community Library, 311 N. Spring St., 920-887-4631. This paper is indexed.

*  Dodge County Gazette - English language paper for Dodge Center: May to June 9, 1852.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  Horicon Argus - English language paper for Horicon: 7 September 1854 - 30 November 1860.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  Horicon Gazette - English language paper for Horicon: 9 January 1861 - 1 January 1862.
Microfilm available from the Wisconsin State Historical Society through interlibrary loan.

*  The Watertown Library has copies of The Democrat, The Republican and The Watertown Daily Times dating back to the 1850's. They are all indexed. They are not specific to Dodge Co. but do have whatever Dodge Co. residents live in and near Watertown.

Uh oh, that gives me weeks of work to do, I fear!  Or I could hire a researcher there.  Fortunately, the Four-Mile House typescript lists many articles from these newspapers that refer to Ranslow Smith, but I'm really interested in the Devier J. Lanphier Smith and Abigail Vaux family (my second great-grandparents), who married there and had their first three children thereDevier's age, and perhaps his birth parents and potential siblings.  News of the Samuel Vaux family will be sought also. 

It looks like a visit to the Beaver Dam Community Library is mandatory, and then there's the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison and the Watertown Library.  I probably need more than two days to do this, so I'll need to prioritize places and details.  And make a later visit if I run out of time.

4)  Review Family History books, Local History books, Maps, cemetery transcriptions/indexes, and vertical files at the Beaver Dam library for Smith, Vaux and Lanphear persons. 

5)  What else should I do in Dodge County?  I welcome your ideas! 

My next step is to review the local libraries for open hours, location, and access restrictions (do they permit digital cameras, notebooks, laptops, flash drives, etc.).  Then I'll look at the Madison, Deerfield, and Eagle, Wisconsin areas to prepare for the trip.

One thing I need to firm up is possible hotels in Dodge County for at least a one night stay.  We have the AAA book.  If you have any ideas, please let me know!  I figure Watertown or Beaver Dam are the closest to Burnett.

As you can see, I have used online resources extensively this morning (yes, all this morning in about two hours) to find the material above.  I find that by writing it on my blog, in an organized way, and saving images and web pages to my computer (and to my laptop), I can organize my plans quickly, and can ask my readers to contribute information and resources that I've overlooked or not thought about.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Jonathan Oatley's 1872 Death Certificate

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It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the certified death certificate for Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) of Killingly, Windham County, Connecticut:

The information in this death certificate is fairly sparse, mainly because the town of Killingly did not collect a lot of information when a person died in this time frame.  The information available is:

*  Name:  Jonathan Oatley
*  Sex:  Male
*  Date of Birth:  ------
*  Race:  White
*  Age:  82
*  Date of Death:  Aug. 10, 1872
*  County of Death: Windham
*  Town of Death:  Killingly
*  City & State of birth:  So. Kingston, Rhode Island
*  Marital Status:  Widowed
*  Last Spouse:  --------------------
*  Usual Occupation:  Clergyman
*  Residence-State:  Connecticut
*  Residence-County: Windham
*  Residence-Town:  Killingly
*  Cause of Death:  Old Age
*  Certification - Physician:  E.A. Hill

I did not include all of the other fields on the form which had no typed data in them.

I obtained this certificate by mail from Kathleen M. Pelletier, Registrar of Vital Statistics for the town of Killingly, on 24 January 1992.

Changes at FamilySearch Coming Soon

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Jim Ericson of FamilySearch posted Search Feature Changes in Upcoming FamilySearch Releases yesterday that describes what's going to happen soon with searching the FamilySearch historical record collections.  The changes include (the FamilySearch summaries are edited a bit), with my comments:

FS:  Results Layout in Rows and Columns -- We will be refining the way results are presented on screen to optimize your ability to quickly scan up and down columns of events and relationships and identify relevant matches.

Randy:  I like the idea, but I hope they don't remove the down arrow to see an index summary for the match item without clicking the name.  That works well and is very helpful to see the indexed entries, including the FHL film number in many cases.

FS:   Multiple Event and Relationship Searching -- In coming months, the basic search form will be retired, replaced by an advanced form that is even simpler, but much more powerful.

Randy:  Simpler and more powerful is good.  Will it confuse beginning researchers?  Will there even be an "advanced form?" 

FS:  Improved Filters -- We are refining filters with simpler function which require fewer clicks and allow patrons to select multiple items.

Randy:  To me, filters are useful only with a global search.  They are superflous if I'm doing a search in one specific collection.  I can limit searches for places and years in a specific collection from the Search fields, which are currently hidden in the "New Search" down arrow at the top left.  I would prefer to have the Search fields always present in the left panel showing what I've used, and to enable me to quickly edit as I refine or expand my search.

FS:  A Multiple Collection Search -- We will allow you to select multiple collections on the Browse All collections page as well as in the search form and the results filter.

Randy:  Selecting multiple collections will be an improvement, I think.  Will I be able to use it after using a Keyword to a specific place or topic?  Many collections don't have an index, and I'm concerned that a user might be misled into thinking that there are no matches in their selected databases because there is no index.

FS:  More Matching Options (Exact Search, Close Search, and Missing Search) -- The default search currently displays exact results, close results, and then results that may have one or more of your search parameters missing. You can specify that you want only exact matches, but you cannot specify only exact and close. Shortly you will be able to specify Exact, Exact+Close or Exact+Close+Missing on a field by field basis.

Randy:  This sounds good in principle, but is not really an improvement, I think.  I didn't know that they found "missing" results before.  What is the algorithm for surname spellings for the "close" category - is it only Soundex (or similar)?  Will "Close" find years outside of the date range input?  Is there a dictionary for nicknames, initials and spelling variations of given names?

FS:  A Billion More Records -- The new release of FamilySearch gives you access to nearly twice as many records as the Record Search Pilot. With Record Search Pilot, you had access to 1.2 billion records. With the new release of FamilySearch, you have access to 2.1 billion records. This number increases weekly as millions of new records are added to FamilySearch each week.

Randy:  What is a "record?"  Is it an index entry for a person?  Or is it also an image (in browse-only collections)?

There are currently 696 historical record collections on the FamilySearch list (https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list) and only some of them are indexed.  Many of them came from the "classical" FamilySearch International Genealogical Index (IGI) collection of extracted records.  More and more historical record collections that were on microfilm are coming online as "Browse Only" collections without indexes, such as the "Kentucky Probate Records, 1792-1977" released today.

"Census, census, get'cher 1940 census here..."

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I mentioned in Comments on the 1940 U.S. Census RFQ and SOW that the 1940 United States Census would be available to purchase from the National Archives on 2 April 2012.

The NARA E-Store has it for sale (see https://estore.archives.gov/SAMPLE_STATE.pdf) (two screens):

Yes, you too can have all 3.8 million digital images (almost 20 terabytes, that's 20,000 gigabytes) for the bargain price of 5.2 cents per image, or a grand total of $200,000.  Or you can order specific states for prices ranging from $3,000 to $9,000.  You do need to send a pre-payment of only $10,000 for the full 1940 census before 1 October 2011 if you want to guarantee. delivery on 2 April 2012.

It appears that whoever wins the NARA contract to host and provide access to the 1940 census images, for up to five years, will save $200,000.  However, that company has to follow all of the contract requirements, make reports and presentations to NARA, and manage the actual work of creating index links between the Enumeration District maps and the images, plus permit panning, zooming, printing and saving (up to whole ED sets).  For up to five years. 

Granted, a company that purchases the census images from NARA will have to create the index links to the images and then create the name indexes, but they don't have to manage and execute the contract requirements for up to five years.

So now we have an answer to one of my questions in my earlier post - how much will the 1940 census cost?  The NARA e-Store page doesn't differentiate between digital images and microfilm. 

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 167: Betty and her "Baby"

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I'm posting family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be Wordless Wednesday posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

Here is a photograph from the Seaver/Carringer family collection handed down by my mother in the
1988-2002 time period:

This photograph is of my mother, Betty Carringer (1919-2002), taken in about 1922, and is in the Pentecost album.  She is cradling a doll, standing in the middle of a red berry bush patch (I think - I remember these bushes, they usually had small red mushy berries and grew prolifically).   The picture was probably taken on the Carringer property between Fern Street and 30th Street on the block north of Hawthorn Street in San Diego. 

Betty is wearing an apron over her dress.  The apron has a pocket, and an image of a girl in a bonnet running with a net.  I wonder if the apron was hand-made by one of her grandmothers.

Trying to be a Good Geni.com Citizen

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I decided to work in the Geni.com online family tree system to see how easy it was to edit a profile, add a discussion item, add a source and several other features.

One of the more egregious errors that I found in the Geni.com world tree was the information about William White (ca 1708 - ca 1780), the son of William and Elizabeth (Cadman) White, and the husband of Abigail Thurston.  I had not added him to the Geni.com tree, but I had added his son Jonathan White (ca 1732-1804) in my tree, and then had merged my tree with another tree with Jonathan White that linked to his parents.  

The data for William White (ca 1632-ca 1777) had two sets of parents for him, two spouses (one had the same name as the spurious mother), 14 siblings and five children.  His birth was listed as 1632 in Boston Mass. and the death date was listed as the date he wrote his will in 1777.

I decided to add a Discussion item, which said:

The sketch for this William White, in the book "Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Volume Thirteen: William White" published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants in 1997, provides the best information about this person and his family.

This William White is #201 in the book (page 129). Here are the assertions from the book:

* William White was the son of William White and Elizabeth Cadman (page 46). He was NOT the son of "William Fuller White" and "Phillipa Wood." That link should be eliminated.

* William White was born around 1708, probably in Dartmouth MA, not in 1632 in Boston MA. His father, William White was born in 1683 to Sylvanus and Deborah (--?--) White. This birth year of 1632 for this William is a major error in this database and should be corrected.

* His siblings were George, Sarah, Hannah, Roger, Christopher, Susanna, Elizabeth, Oliver, Abner and Thomas. He was not a brother of Ursula, Isaac, Cornelius, and Margaret - these links should be eliminated.

* William White married Abigail Thurston on 2 Oct 1729 in Little Compton RI. He was not the husband of Phillipa Wood - that connection should be eliminated.

* William and Abigail (Thurston) White had children: Sarah, Hannah, Jonathan, Elizabeth and Abigail. Those appear correct.

* William White did not die on 17 Feb 1777. He wrote his will on 17 Feb 1777, and it was proved on 3 Oct 1780 in Bristol County MA Probate Court. It would be more accurate to say that he died before 3 Oct 1780.

The book mentioned above is on bookshelves all over the country. Geni.com users should be using authoritative books written by respected and credentialed researchers when they are available, rather than picking likely parents, siblings and children off online family trees.

I then clicked on the "Edit Profile" link and added the more correct birth date (ca 1708) and birth place (Dartmouth, Bristol, MA) and the death date (ca 3 Oct 1780) and death place (Dartmouth, Bristol, MA).

Then I added the source citation to the Sources list as:

Ruth Wilder Sherman, FASG and Robert Moody Sherman, CG, FASG, edited by Robert S. Wakefield, FASG, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, Volume 13: Family of William White (Plymouth, Mass.: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1997).

I then linked the Facts I had corrected to the source citation.

After doing this, the Profile for William White (ca 1708 - ca 1780) looked like this:

Note that it still has the spurious parents and siblings because I haven't split the wrong ones off from this William White. 

There are six tabs at the bottom of the screen above - for Overview, Media, Timeline, Discussions, sources and Revisions.  The Revisions screen looks like this:

At the bottom of the page, all of the revisions (additions, corrections, deletions) are shown by Geni member, date and fact type.

The Sources page looks like this:

The only other source, before I added the Mayflower Families book, was a Family Tree Maker database.  Not a source citation, just a computer file that no one else can access.

Here is the Discussions page after I typed in it:

I completed the above by 10:12 AM today, and by 11:06 AM the Curator had disconnected the spurious set of parents, the spurious wife, and the spurious children (I figured this out from the Revisions page), as shown below:

In this case, someone was very responsive and made a judgment that my information was correct.  Did the Curator refer to the source I quoted?  I don't know.  I hope so!  If she did, then why hadn't she done it before and corrected these Profiles?  I think it's probably because no one else had added a Discussion item or an authoritative source.

So now I think that the sketch for William White (ca 1708-ca 1780) is now fairly accurate and reflects the information in the Mayflower Families book. 

What about the other sketches for William's parents, grandparents and great-grandparents?  They still need some work - there are spurious names, dates and places for them also in the Geni.com tree.

I think that I will occasionally hunt for obviously wrong sketches to which I can contribute sourced information, and go through the same process.  This won't be my sole genealogy activity, however.  I have plenty more to do than to fix everybody else's research errors.

My tree on Geni.com is somewhat out of date now - I have only 1,000 persons in it.  My RootsMagic tree has over 41,000 persons, with standardized place names, and many more source citations.  Currently, there is no way to easily add information on a large scale to Geni.com.  A user can only add data by going one generation and one person at a time entering names, relationships, dates and places.  That is not a useful way for me to spend my limited time, so I'm going to wait to see what AncestorSync comes up with. 

The problem described and corrected above is pretty typical of the problems on all online family trees - not just the one on Geni.com.  Interlinked family trees like Geni.com, WeRelate.org, WikiTree.com, FamilySearch Tree, Ancestry's One World Tree and One GreatFamily are the ones with the biggest problems, because they are interlinked, and many erroneous relationships have been created through merges spurred by wishfulness or ignorance.    The stand-alone "owned" online trees on many sites have similar problems but they don't have the collaboration tools that the interlinked trees have, and don't claim a goal of being a world tree.

The key to getting accurate and sourced information into interlinked family trees like Geni.com may be very simple:  Genealogists need to take the time to add information from authoritative sources to Profiles and to initiate a Discussion to give reasons for the additions/corrections/deletions.

I think that interlinked trees are here to stay, and we all should do the best we can to ensure that the information that we contribute to them is accurate and adequately sourced.  We should participate in the necessary Discussions to drive tree profiles to accurate information and sources.  We also need to understand that we don't "own" the data in the interlinked trees that we contribute to.

Now I need to work on my Source Reference Lists again.    I got them edited last night, and added some content to them using my Ancestor List data.  Now I need to work through my paper piles to add more content.

My Geni.com Experiences

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After last week's major brouhaha about the "rules change" at Geni.com (see The Geni.com Changes Genea-Blog Compendium for blog responses), I listened to the Blog Talk Radio show last night with Thomas MacEntee interviewing Noah Tutak, the CEO of Geni.com.  You can hear this episode of Geneabloggers Radio here. 

You can read the Geni.com announcements about the changes at Geni Pro Just Got a Whole Lot Better and A Message From Geni’s CEO

Noah described the changes made at Geni.com, and answered many of the chat board questions filtered through Thomas.  George of Geni.com was on the chat board and answered some chatter questions.  They invited people to make comments on the Geni.com Blog post about the show.  Only one chat participant has done that so far.

I hope that someone will summarize the questions and answers from the radio program interview.

I started on Geni.com back in 2008 with a Free account, and uploaded a GEDCOM at that time with about 1,000 ancestral family members.  However, I didn't use the service very much, and did not invite any family members to join me on Geni.com.  The website was "nice looking" but it wasn't a vehicle for me to use for genealogy research, but it was useful as "cousin bait."  It also had the potential to find relationships to celebrities and historical persons, which I have an interest in, mainly for use as blog fodder and my family newsletter.  The problem there is that the persons that I submitted to Geni.com didn't go back far enough to connect through the early American colonial ancestors.

At the 2011 SCGS Jamboree, Geni.com gifted me and other geneabloggers with a Pro account, which I appreciate.  I still have not added a lot of content yet, and I will not unless or until there is a functional GEDCOM capability or a true person-by-person synchronization capability.  AncestorSync appears to be able to transfer a Geni.com file to a GEDCOM or software, or vice versa.  However, I don't think that it will do a person-by-person synchronization.

As a Pro account holder, the changes on Geni.com enhanced my capabilities - I can now edit Profiles of historical persons without contacting the Profile Manager or other persons who have merged their profile for a person into the Profile.  That has advantages and disadvantages - it may enable better scholarship to be added to the tree, and it may cause Edit Wars if people disagree.  There are tabs on each Profile for the Overview, Media, Timeline, Discussions, sources and Revisions.  Users are encouraged to add content to those tabs.

In another post, I will show some of the changes I made for one of my ancestors that had erroneous data in it, due to the merging of the person by two or more Geni.com users.  It will be interesting to see the feedback, if any!

Tuesday's Tip - Check out the BYU Family History Archives

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This week's Tuesday's Tip is to:  Check for FREE family history books at the BYU Family History Archive site (http://lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php).

This site has 17,777 family history books (and there are probably many more - they haven't updated the number for awhile) available for free access - to read, print or save to your computer.  The collection description is:

"The Family History Archive is a collection of published genealogy and family history books. The archive includes histories of families, county and local histories, how-to books on genealogy, genealogy magazines and periodicals (including some international), medieval books (including histories and pedigrees), and gazetteers. It also includes some specialized collections such as the Filipino card collection and the “Liahona Elders Journal.” The books come from the collections of the FamilySearch Family History Library, the Allen County Public Library, the Houston Public Library – Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, the Mid-Continent Public Library – Midwest Genealogy Center, the BYU Harold B. Lee Library, the BYU Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library."

The user can search by Surname, Author or Title keywords.  Alternatively, there is a "Search all" field that will return matches from all of the keyword fields.  There is also an Advanced Search capability that permits a user to search "all of the words," "exact phrase," "any of the words" and "none of the words," and to select specific collections to search.

When you are on the www.FamilySearch.org site and click on the "Books" tab, you are taken to the BYU Family History Archive site.  There are links to these books from within the FamilySearch Library Catalog on the FamilySearch site.

The neat thing is that these are not all "out-of-copyright" books.  They are books that patrons donated to the FamilySearch library, or other participating libraries.  For instance, this collection has the book:

Frederick G. Rolfe, The Early Rolfe Settlers of New England ( Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, 1995). 

This book unlocked several mysteries for me on my Rolfe and Martin ancestry.

How do I catch up to 13 years of genealogy sloth?

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Thirteen years ago I created a spreadsheet of all of the reference sources I had collected in my genealogy research.  I only had Microsoft Works then, so I used that.  To fill in the columns for each surname, I went through my surname notebooks.  I updated these files occasionally as I gathered more information, which were sometimes put into the notebooks, or put into the "to be filed" pile. 

I'm going to the Allen County Public Library in three weeks on our Midwest trip to the FGS Conference and other destinations.  I recalled where the printout of my spreadsheet was, so I got that out.  I have added information since 1998 in handwritten notes. 

Then I went looking for the computer file of the spreadsheet.  Hmmm, it's not in my files for some reason.  Aha, that was two computers ago!  I must have not copied it to the latest computer for some reason. 

Maybe it's on my external hard drive hiding in the 1998 PC directories.  Yep, there it is...dated 1998.  Well, that's OK, I have my handwritten additions on the printout, I can just use the 1998 list with all of the names, and add the handwritten stuff. 

I opened the 1998 MSWorks file in Open Office 3.3, and saved it as an OO file.  Then I edited it a bit, and added the information entered by hand since 1998.  That took about four hours today for just the Seaver ancestry files (but not all of them!). 

Here is a screen shot of the first page of my 17 page Seaver Source listing:

The column headings are:

*  Surname
*  Earliest person's first name (or immigrant ancestor)
*  Origin of earliest person
*  USA towns where family resided
*  Surname books (shorthand)
*  Anthology books (shorthand)
*  County/town books (shorthand)
*  Periodicals (shorthand)

The shorthand for books usually includes a short title, the author and perhaps the repository (including the Carlsbad collection number of the University Microfilms books).

But I have 13 years of research (more or less) to add to the list.  The tasks still left to do include:

*  Update the Seaver Source list (have one major line to add)
*  Update the Carringer Source list. (have two major lines to add).
*  Create a Leland Source list (start from scratch).
*  Go through the "to be filed" pile and "to be entered" pile to add to the lists.
*  Go through my computer files to find content for the lists.
*  Go through my genealogy database notes for ancestors and find content for the lists.

That covers the resource material that I have in my possession -- somewhere.  What about the material I want to find?  That's the next task, including:

*  Update my Book and Periodical lists of "To be found" items.
*  Go systematically through Martin Hollick's book New Englanders in the 1600s to find items I need to find for my New England families (probably 90% of my surnames) and add items to the "To be found" list. 

That's a pretty big job to do in two weeks...but I'm going to tackle it. If I'm able to finish it, then I'll have a clean list of surnames and resource material already found. 

It's funny - I stopped adding paper to my notebooks and stopped keeping this list updated about the same time online resources started popping up all over.  And then genea-blogging began...I've been such a bad genealogy boy for a long time now.  Yea, verily, I have sinned and fallen short of my expectations.

The short answer to my blog title is:  Figure out what information I already have!  Then figure out what I need to find.

I guess the message here is -- I'm going to try to get better organized. Blogging may be light the next two weeks.  And the two weeks following while we're on the vacation.  Or not - we'll see if I can break away from my three-a-day habit here. 

Comments on the 1940 U.S. Census RFQ and SOW

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Links to the 1940 U.S. Census Request for Quote and Statement of Work to host and provide access to it, and selected highlights from the RFQ and SOW, were provided last night.  I have commentary and  questions about this information:

1)  NARA could contract with more than one contractor.  That  might be smart - one contractor might create a significantly better website to provide access than another; and a contractor might fail at completing the job; having more than one contractor provides some insurance.  Free hosting and indexing the images by the contractor costs NARA very little if they have more than one contractor.  Competition creates quality products. 

2)  The FREE access requirement is for searching for, browsing, downloading and sharing the images only - not for the indexing. 

 3) The contract is for one year, with four one-year options for renewal. What happens if NARA decides to not renew the contract? After the contract termination, NARA could host and provide access, using the image search index developed by the contractor, on their own site.

4)  I do not see a contract requirement to CREATE a name index.  A name index is mentioned only in Section 3 in the context that the Contractor can create a name index starting on 2 April 2012, but not before. 

5)  The Contractor can also host the census images on their own web site, and create other products, on its own web site.  Apparently, the Contractor(s) won't have to purchase the images from NARA.  That provides a financial incentive to win the contract.

6)  NARA will offer the 1940 US Census images in digital or microfilm format for sale, after 2 April 2012.  Who would want a microfilm set?  How much will they cost?  Will the cost of the digital set be different from the microfilm set? 

7)  Purchasing the census images will provide an opportunity for all potential name indexers, and will probably spur a competition to complete the name index and to index many fields.  However, the Contract winner(s) will have an advantage early on.

8)  Potential name indexers might be able to use the census images on the Contractor developed site for free, but that may be difficult to accomplish.

9)  Who are the candidates for submitting a proposal for the NARA Contract?  The obvious answers (to me) are FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, Archives.com, FamilyLink.com, or some other non-profit or commercial website with the required physical, technical and management resources. 

10)  How long will it take to index the 1940 U.S. Census?  There are 130 million names in the census, with 40 or 50 indexable fields on the sheets - that's a lot of indexing.  That's 498 person-years indexing at one name every two minutes (I don't know how long it will take).  Who has the resources to do this indexing?  My guess is that only Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have the financial and/or volunteer resources to do this - who else has indexed large databases from scratch recently?

11)  Ancestry.com said in 1940 Census To Be Free on Ancestry.com that "...more than 3.8 million original document images containing 130 million plus records will be available to search by more than 45 fields, including name, gender, race, street address, county and state, and parents’ places of birth. It will be Ancestry.com’s most comprehensively indexed set of historical records to date."  Will Ancestry.com be able to index the complete census by the end of 2013, when access to the index (and perhaps the images on Ancestry) will go behind their subscriber wall?  I think that Ancestry used paid indexers for the 1930 census, and many other large databases.  Do they have enough volunteer indexers to do this task in 21 months or less?

12)  Has FamilySearch made any statements about the 1940 U.S. census hosting, access and indexing?  I don't think I've seen a report about it, but I've heard some rumors.  The United States Census Population Schedules, 1940 (Family Search Historical Records) Research Wiki page says:  "This article describes a collection of historical records that is scheduled to become available for free online at FamilySearch" but doesn't provide any more details at this time.

What questions do you have about this 1940 U.S. Census contract to be awarded by NARA?  List them here in Comments, or write your own blog post, and I'll create a compendium of questions that need answers from NARA and/or the Contractor(s).

Denise asked (in Comments):  "It appears that NARA wants to keep access at no cost forever, but Ancestry is only offering it for free for a limited time."

My opinion:  I think that NARA will eventually host the census on its own site, with one of the name indexes available from some provider for use in a NARA facility.  That's the type of agreement they made with Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, FamilySearch.org, etc. to permit indexing of other NARA databases they are free to access in a NARA facility.  Ancestry is offering free access through 2013 for the census images, not necessarily the complete index.  It's logical to assume they will index this collection as quickly as possible, state-by-state, but it may not be complete by the end of 2013.