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Quick Tips #34: Brainstorm variations of your ancestors’ names

March 18, 2022 By Janine Adams Leave a Comment

Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one might be helpful when you dive into the 1950 census.

Brainstorm variations of your ancestors’ names

With the release of the 1950 U.S. census less than two weeks away, now seems like a good time to suggest that you take a moment to come up with alternative ways your ancestors’ names may have been spelled–or interpreted by indexers–on documents. Once you have your list, you can use the different variants when searching at the various online site, like Ancestry, Family Search, the NARA 1950 census site, MyHeritage, and Newspapers.com.

Variations might include:

First and middle names
Initials in place of first name
First initial, middle name
Phonetic spellings
Possible misinterpretations of handwritten letters — I talk about this in my blog post, Sometimes you gotta browse.

If you’re compiling your list of ancestors to look for on the 1950 census, it might be smart to add these variations–then hang on to them for future searches.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Preparing for the 1950 census release

March 9, 2022 By Janine Adams 2 Comments

April 1, the day the 1950 U.S. Census will be released, is less than a month away. While I declared that my March 30 x 30 challenge would be around watching RootsTech classes, it hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, I’m focusing more on getting ready for the 1950 census release.

I managed to work on both those goals simultaneously by watching Steve Morse’s RootsTech session called Getting Ready for the 1950 Census: Searching With and Without a Name Index last week. This is 50-minute session with great instruction on how to use Morse’s Unified 1950 Census ED Finder to find the enumeration districts of your relatives whose 1950 addresses in case you can’t find by using the index. (By the way, there’s a transcript version of that session, including the slides, here.)

So I’m busy filling out my spreadsheet of ancestors to look for with enumeration districts to check out on the morning of April 1. (I probably won’t stay until midnight to do it in the wee hours of the day.)

I blogged about Marian Burke Wood’s terrific presentation to the Kentucky State Historical Society on preparing for the census release. Today I received an email with a link to a video short of tips extracted from that talk. (And there’s a transcript!)

Other great resources for the 1950 census include this page from the Genealogical Forum of Oregon with information on the 1950 census, including instructions to enumerators, blank forms and a sample filled-in questionnaire. The site also has links to instructions for creating a list of ancestors who were alive in 1950 in Family Tree Maker, Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic.

The National Archives is holding a series of webinars this spring on the 1950 census. Check out this webpage for the schedule and for links to past webinars in the series.

According to the National Archives 1950 census page, there will be a name index for the 1950 census as soon as it’s released. But since it’s created by artificial intelligence, there are bound to be inaccuracies. That’s why I’m looking up enumeration districts so I don’t spend my April Fool’s Day being frustrated. The National Archives is asking for our help in correcting the AI-generated index. There will be a transcription tool we can use to help. Check out NARA’s 1950 webpage for more information.

Where will we go to look for the 1950 census on April 1? If I’m reading NARA’s 1950 census page right, it will be available right on their page.

RootsTech starts in 6 days: Start planning now!

February 25, 2022 By Janine Adams 4 Comments

The RootsTech 2022 website is now live! That means you have just under a week to plan your RootsTech experience by creating a playlist of the classes you want to watch. You can also take note of the main stage speeches and mark them in your calendar if you want to watch them live.

While my 2021 playlist is gone, I was excited to discover that the 2021 talks are still available for viewing. You can find them by clicking on Sessions and scrolling down in the Filters area on the left side to “Year.” Select 2021 and you’ll see that there are 1767 talks available to view now.

You can also filter by topic, research location, speakers or other filters and then within those results filter by year. You can add both 2021 and 2022 classes to your playlist (or watch the 2021 classes now). I don’t know whether the 2021 classes will be still be available when RootsTech 2022 starts next week. As I mentioned in my post last week, I tend to think they’ll be removed.

For sessions that will be presented live, the time is listed for the session on the search result. My understanding is that the pre-recorded 2022 sessions will be made available when RootsTech starts, which is Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 9 am Central Standard Time (GMT -6). That’s 11:00 AM in Rio, 6:00 PM in London; 12:00 PM in Tokyo and 2:00 am [Thursday] in Sydney.

Look for download links for class syllabi at the bottom of each class listing. Based on my poking around, it looks to me like syllabi for 2022 classes won’t appear until the conference starts. But you can download syllabi for 2021 classes you’re interested in now.

The array of classes available is truly impressive. And I know it can feel overwhelming. Personally, I’ll get past that overwhelmed feeling by planning ahead and creating a playlist. While I know I can watch these classes for about a year, I’m going to try hard to take in RootsTech 2022 content while the conference is going on, so I can be part of the global experience and so I actually watch the classes. I found that I did not watch the 2021 content I intended to watch (though I did watch some last week!) and that disappoints me.

Once the conference starts, I’ll be eager to find my Relatives at Rootstech, visit the Virtual Expo Hall and check out the chatrooms for the classes I’m interested in.

If you have questions about RootsTech, the FAQ has lots of great information. You might find the post I wrote about the 2021 virtual conference helpful. I plan to write something similar once this year’s conference begins and I can check out the features.

If you haven’t registered yet, just go to www.rootstech.org and click on Register. It’s free and easy! Let me know in the conference whether you’re planning to attend. Who knows, we might find out we’re related!

Quick Tip #33: Always check the document image

February 22, 2022 By Janine Adams 6 Comments

Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one could be really helpful if it’s not already your practice!

Always check the document image

If you’re doing research online and locate a document that pertains to your ancestor, you usually have the opportunity to click on a link that shows you the (typewritten) indexed information. And you also have the opportunity to click to see an image of the document itself. Please take the opportunity to look at the image.

Why look at the document image? Here’s a great reason: Not every bit of information is necessarily indexed, so you may glean information from looking at the document that you would have missed had you relied on the index. Another reason is that the document may not be indexed correctly, something you might be able to tell by looking at the document image.

Plus, in my opinion it’s fun to look at old handwritten documents. I take every opportunity I can!