Sunday, August 23, 2009

Common sense and census indexes

I'm a firm believer in using all available censuses and the data they contain. But there's also a good reason to use common sense.

Minnesota is home to many different ethnic groups, and has been for centuries. However, if you are researching in Minnesota, be aware that the Ancestry.com indexes were not done by people who knew about Minnesota ethnicity. For example, the letter "I" used for 'Indian' as a race indicator looks a little like "J." Under instructions to use full words for the index, the transcriber reported the race to be 'Japanese' for some people were really Dakota Indians. In another, the letter "H" for 'half-breed' was expanded to Hindu for many entries for both Ojibwe and Dakota Indians. In the first case, it was a mis-read of one letter; in the second list, it was choosing the wrong term. Both kinds of errors can mess you up if you don't use a little common sense and look beyond the index.

Of course, it's always worthwhile to look at the original source, but especially if you aren't having luck with the index. If people working with hundreds of entries can make errors like these, what did they do to your ancestor's name or to the remainder of the information they indexed?

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