Saturday, December 8, 2018

Now Indexing :
Back to NYC Naturalization Records


It's so difficult being homeless. Our genealogical society may have big plans and hopes, but we are still strapped to a very small budget. Despite our sixty-plus years of existence, we still depend on the graces of others for those tangible items which help any office run smoothly. Come to think of it, we even depend on others to supply that "office" space for us to conduct our business.

All that to say, it's hard to plan for training sessions for our members when we don't even have a place to host them. I'm still waiting on the word about whether we can use a computer-friendly site to train our members on how to index records at FamilySearch. Our plans for a team-centric indexing challenge may have to wait until next year. Fortunately, that year is drawing ever closer.

In the meantime, I'm playing it solo in the indexing department. I returned to my usual haunts for this month's indexing installment. New York City is always good for more naturalization records. Besides, I keep hoping to uncover a few more relatives in the process.

While there are some digitized entries from this record set already searchable online, New York being New York, there are many more to be indexed. I can always be sure of going back to the FamilySearch indexing website and finding another set of New York City naturalization records to research.

This time, I indexed records concerning quite a few immigrants from Ireland—wondering, all the while, whether the ones who came from locales of my father-in-law's family might have known any of our relatives. The world becomes a much smaller place, once we have all these documents at our fingertips, rather than seeing the crowded blur of people rushing past our faces. Digitized records in searchable form not only make a genealogist's tasks more quickly executed; they also allow us to see more of the world's timeline in microcosm form.

4 comments:

  1. We are very fortunate. Our local museum has donated a room for our use and area library are happy to host free classes and allow use of their computers (in Ohio libraries have the free library version of Ancestory) in a designated setting.

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    1. You are fortunate, Miss Merry--and we are, too, in a way. There are some organizations which are happy to let us use their facilities, but the caveat is that we are teaching their patrons as part of our core mission. What I need right now is a place where we can serve our own members by teaching them skills they can use to achieve our own organization's goals, like taking on special indexing projects. I'm hoping one of those friendly organizations will be willing to make that exception and share their space with us for our mission, rather than just simply serving as part of their mission.

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  2. I indexed today...Texas birth records. You may have to do some one on one training!

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    Replies
    1. One on one might be the way to go, Far Side, if we don't get a venue for any group trainings. But I'm holding out. Something will come up. In the meantime, hooray that you are plugging along with indexing. Every little bit makes a difference!

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