Are You Indexing?

Many researchers are enjoying "giving" to the genealogical world by indexing records for Family Search Indexing. The 1900 Mississippi Census is one of the databases presently being indexed. We are up to Leake County, Mississippi alphabetically. If you aren't currently involved, consider joining! Other current options include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. I've actually indexed batches from almost every one of these states and a few others. However, I try to focus mainly on Mississippi.

School Days

One often-overlooked resource which is very helpful for Mississippi researchers is the censuses of educable children which are available for the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these are available online for Tallahatchie County researchers at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstallah/education/index.html. Some have been published by local historical and genealogical societies to help their efforts. Examples of these are Tate County at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstate/gensoc.html and Tishomingo County at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstchgs/ (click on publications). Itawamba Historical Society has published these lists in various issues of Itawamba Settlers over the years. This publication is indexed in PERSI. This database is available to many library patrons and society members. One researcher offers to do lookups in the lists for Lawrence and Lincoln Counties at http://www.rootsweb.com/~msquery/. A very good description of the Oktibbeha County lists is available at http://www.sturgisms.homestead.com/educable.html. In the lists I've seen, the head of the household is listed and each child of school age is listed along with her or her age. If you go to http://www.familysearch.org and choose to search the catalog, you can do a keyword on the term "educable" and come up with the various ones which are available at the Family History Library and in Family History Centers across the country.

Indexing the 1900 MS Census

I signed up as a volunteer over at http://www.familysearchindexing.org/. It takes a couple of days to get your password. Once you are "official", you can do the training tutorials and then begin indexing. The first time I went in to retrieve a batch, I didn't quite understand how to specify from which project I wanted my records, and I got a bunch of Poles in Massachusetts. However, I've learned that by choosing the "Download from" button that I can choose the project I want. Most of the MS records I've received so far have been Holmes County, but one batch was Grenada County. I also decided to try Alabama to see what counties I got there. I got Talladega. I've recruited a few other volunteers. The software is simple to use. You do need a high speed Internet connection. I hope you'll consider volunteering.

Lawrence County Census Duplicate Pages

LINK - Dennis Partridge has found some duplicate census pages in the Lawrence County census on Ancestry.com. The good news is that there are no pages missing--just some repeats!