Now Indexing: Manhattan Birth Records

I took a spin through the good ol' days in the place of my birth—only, it was one hundred years before I crashed the scene. This was my chance to help fellow New Yorkers find their ancestors' birth records at FamilySearch.org.

Today's record sets were fairly simple. Other than having the appearance of being the fuzzy carbon copy of typewritten index cards, the entries were straightforward, making this an easy project to squeeze into a busy day. I did run into a few cards which outright made me weepy—and not just because they contained a surname connected to my father's family (Lawless). The digitized versions were just so blurry, I could barely make out whether those numbers stood for a "3" or a "5," for example. But I muddled through, nonetheless.

Besides the record-breaking speed with which I completed my batches of Manhattan birth records, I did come by some additional good news on the indexing front. Our genealogy society has long wanted to team-tackle some indexing projects—particularly those which represent record sets from our own locale. We've set up a team online at FamilySearch.org, but before we got started, I had one additional requirement: I wanted a computer training room where our members could all gather together, first for training and review in what's new in online indexing at FamilySearch, and then so that we could have the camaraderie of working together as a team.

Well, this week has finally brought us one step closer to this goal. We have now been granted the use of a lovely library computer lab in one of the centrally-located cities in our county. But for tidying up some scheduling issues and getting the official word out, we are all set to go. Soon, instead of all of us working alone in our own corners at home, we can come together to cheer each other on while we work on a project together. Can't wait until the team gets together and busts through some indexing records!