Ancestry.com has posted an every-name index to the 1910 U.S. Federal Census. The posting of this index completes Ancestry.com’s every-name index project for all Federal censuses currently available to the public – 1790 through 1930.
Folks – this is really big news. The 1910 census microfilm from which the digital images were made was by far the worst census film of any year available to us. After the microfilming of the census schedules, they were destroyed – leaving us with this terrible and difficult to read microfilm. There was good reason for why the 1910 every-name index was done last. It’s because it was extremely hard to do. Every genealogist who has attempted to read much of the 1910 film will agree that to produce an index of this nature was a herculean task. Congratulations to Ancestry.com for finally getting the job done.
Now for the downside. Note that I just said that the film was hard to read. As you know, much of it is illegible! If you can’t read it, how can you produce an accurate index? You can’t. Also, keep in mind that Ancestry.com didn’t pull this off using scholars from Harvard in the transcription process. No. For many years now, the census indexes have been transcribed in places like India, and Bangladesh. No American company has been able to pay American workers the amount they require per hour to transcribe census – so the work goes “off-shore.” The AP is reporting that 6.6 million hours were spent on the project (1790-1930). I can assure you that most of those hours were not in the good old U.S. of A. Sure – the transcribers know English, but keep in mind that their mother-tongue and language is much different than ours. It’s just logical that error will be made because of language differences.
But don’t let me sit here and throw cold water on the project! I’m thrilled that we now have this data available to us – and will use the new index with glee! And if I don’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll get “inventive” as I use the index. No change there – we’ve always had to use indexes with caution and intellect. And if the index still doesn’t help, I may have to revert to the old method – searching page after page of difficult-to-read microfilm trying to find my family. I say “microfilm,” for I’ve found that the microfilm of the 1910 census is still easier to read than the digital images made there from. So it’s off to the Family History Library in those rare instances that I can’t read the digital images.
To check out the new 1910 every-name census index, visit, www.ancestry.com.
