Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter A Weekly Summary of Events and Topics of Interest to Online Genealogists Vol. 4 No. 18 - May 1, 1999 Past issues of this Newsletter are available at: http://www.ancestry.com/columns/eastman/index.htm ============================================================ - Heritage Quest U.S. Census Indexes on CD-ROM Heritage Quest, formerly known as the American Genealogical Lending Library (AGLL), has been supplying genealogy data on paper and microfilm for many years. In the past year or two they have moved into digital publishing, and I have written about some of their earlier products in this newsletter. This week I had a chance to use one of their newest products: the Family Quest Archives CD-ROM version of the 1870 U.S. census. The particular disk that I used was for the state of Ohio. Other companies have produced CD-ROM census indexes in the past, and indexes are now becoming available online as well. However, there is one major difference in Heritage Quest's new CD-ROM disks: these are newly-created indexes. Printed indexes to the 1790 through 1850 censuses and some 1860 censuses have been available for many years. However, these indexes are plagued by a high error rate. In some spot checks, as many as 10% of the records are missing or mislabeled or contained erroneous spellings. Until now, most of the electronic U.S. census indexes came from the same source as the printed books. Heritage Quest has actually delivered new indexes, created by trained specialists. Quoting from the company's advertising: Heritage Quest's precision extraction process ensures accuracy. The company implements a Total Quality Management Process throughout: * Data Extraction Specialists, who know dated script, are hired and trained for keying records * Senior Editing Team reviews documents and oversees quality control * Proprietary Computer Editing process helps eliminate possible human error *Statistical Audits ensure extracted data meets stringent quality standards Heritage Quest claims that their audits of the new Family Quest Archives index shows a very low error rate. I didn't have the time to validate that claim, but I suspect they are right. Another major change in the new Heritage Quest indexes is the addition of more data. The earlier indexes created by another company typically contained only the Name, County, Locality, Series, Roll and Page Number. The new CD-ROM disks from Heritage Quest also contain all of that information but add Age, Sex, Race, and Birthplace. This makes it much easier to find an ancestor with a common name such as Smith, Jones, Johnson or Brown. When looking for an ancestor with such a name in a populated city in previous indexes, the researcher might have found hundreds of potential "hits" and needed to look at each one individually on the original census microfilm rolls. Now the same researcher can quickly narrow the search. One example now possible would be to find all the black men named Johnson under the age of 40 who were born in North Carolina. The new census indexes from Heritage Quest will support that. The Family Quest Archives indexes on CD-ROM require either Windows 95 or Windows 98 on a 486 CPU or faster, 16 megabytes of RAM memory, 15 megabytes of disk space and a CD-ROM drive. The company notes that they do not support Windows NT, and I had difficulty trying to make it work on my Windows NT 4.0 workstation. However, when I moved to a Windows 95 system, it installed properly. Heritage Quest also says that the CD-ROM disks will operate on a Macintosh PowerPC running emulation software, such as Virtual PC. There is no user's manual, other than the online help files, and I didn't see any need for such a manual. I wrote user's manuals a few years ago and have noted a big switch in the software world: a few years ago, a thick user's manual was considered to be mandatory with any software product. Nowadays, software is expected to be intuitive and user-friendly and not even require a user's manual. The Heritage Quest Census Index help files were a bit simplistic and are not context-sensitive. Yet I was always able to find the answers to the questions that I did have. The program interface is very simple. The main screen displays three basic windows: Field List, Search Criteria and Search Results. The Field List shows all ten extracted fields in these 1870 census indexes. All fields can be searched; for instance, you could search for all the men with a first name of Harry who were born in North Carolina. With any field you choose, you have the option to search for an Exact Match, Contains (a wildcard search option) or Exclude (allowing you to omit search criteria). The simple searches were very quick. A search for all persons named EASTMAN required only a second or two to execute on my rather old 120 megahertz Pentium Windows 95 system. More complex searches took a bit longer. The search for all the men with a first name of Harry who were born in North Carolina required about two minutes to complete. That's still a lot faster than searching through microfilms! The "Contains" search option allows you to enter a partial name with wildcards. You can insert an asterisk to represent a string of characters or a question mark to represent a single character. For instance, the surname STEPHENSON could have several variant spellings. To account for these spellings, you could enter: "STE*NS?N." All variant spellings will then be found: STEVENSON, STEVENSEN, STEAVENSON, STEPHENSON and STEPHENSEN. Other options include: * Age Ranges - When searching the age field using Contains, you are presented with a dialog box that allows you to enter two ages to form an age range. The range option lets you narrow the field of possibilities. Let's say you're unsure of an actual age, but you know your ancestor was between 40 and 50 years of age. You can use the Contains option to find all entries for that age range. * Sorting. Once you've produced a list of search results, you can sort by any of the criteria in ascending or descending order. Sort on age, for example, and compare birthplaces and other data for individuals with the same name. * Copying. You can easily "cut and paste" a record into your favorite genealogy program, word processor or whatever other Windows program you choose. * You can also save files as ASCII text for placement in a word processor or spreadsheet document. However, you are limited to saving only 20 records at a time. That can be a significant drawback if you are trying to save all the JOHNSONs in Cleveland! I used the Ohio 1870 census disk for this report, but Heritage Quest also has completed the 1870 census indexes for Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. They expect to complete all of the other states in the 1870 censuses by the end of 1999. The Family Quest Archives 1870 U.S. Census Indexes on CD-ROM sell for either $29.95 or $39.95 each, depending upon the amount of data available. The company also has released the 1790 U.S. federal Census Index ($29.95), the Idaho 1910 Census Index ($19.95), U.S. Marriage Index, 1691-1850 ($39.95) and the U.S. Land Index, 1790-1907 ($39.95). All prices mentioned are in U.S. dollars and do not include shipping charges. For more information, or to order one of these CD-ROM disks, go to http://www.heritagequest.com ============================================================ - Across the Waters (A Book Review) This week I read "Across the Waters - Ontario Immigrants' Experiences, 1820 - 1850" by Frances Hoffman and Ryan Taylor. This is not so much a genealogy book as it is a history book, describing the events and misfortunes of everyday people. It has many fascinating stories. Quoting from the book's announcement: One of the reasons for doing genealogy is to see how our ancestors lived. The most dramatic experience was emigrating across the ocean, but how much do we know about what it was like? It would be terrific to hear an actual emigrant describe the trip. Across the Waters: Ontario Immigrants' Experiences, 1820-1850, by Frances Hoffman and Ryan Taylor gathers together selections from firsthand accounts so that today's readers can discover what it meant to be a pioneer in Ontario. From the day they decided to strike off across the Atlantic to the first harvest in their own clearing, the settlers will tell you about the seasickness, the quarantine station, the mosquitoes--the fish you could scoop out of streams with your bare hands, the pride of owning your own land and the joys of helping one another build a house. The book is full of first-hand descriptions of life's everyday events written by the people who lived through them. Many of the stories came from diaries, letters and newspaper accounts of the time. For instance, in 1832 Alexander David wrote about the cholera epidemic: ... Many of the merchants' offices had only one person in them. For weeks I was the only clerk in our establishment; one of the partners was ill with the disease, and seventy or eighty people were buried daily. My friends, the raftsmen, brought their rafts into the various coves and hurried back as fast as possible to the woods of Upper Canada. Large sugar kettles burned day and night with tar at the corners of the street, and a coffin maker started a shop close to our office. Many a time I walked home to our pleasant place, but following a coffin, as a new cemetery was just made on the roadside leading home... If your ancestors were in Ontario any time between 1820 and 1850, I suspect you will find this to be a very interesting book. In fact, the book covers more than just Ontario as many of the immigrants traveled through other provinces and recorded their experiences. "Across the Waters: Ontario Immigrants' Experiences, 1820-1850" is published by Global Heritage Press in Milton, Ontario. It sells for $29.95 Canadian funds for the soft-cover edition. I believe that is the equivalent of about $20.00 in U.S. funds. The hardcover version is available for $44.95 Canadian, about $30.00 U.S. Anyone outside of Canada can easily order the book online and charge it to a credit card. The credit card companies will handle the currency exchange and complete the charge in your local currency. For more information, look at: http://www.globalgenealogy.com and especially http://www.globalgenealogy.com/101008.htm. ============================================================