There are a lot of ways to contribute to the always-growing mass of genealogical information on the internet, be it cemetery transcription, keying records, obituaries, photographs, and whatever else. I have done all of those things mentioned and a few more in small quantities, but for some reason my favorite thing, the thing that makes me the most proud (and for no reason I can really explain) is when I get an automated email from Ancestry.com thanking me for editing transcription errors, especially on census indexes.
So many times have I searched and searched through pages upon pages of the census only to find that yes, my family was indeed in the census and just indexed incorrectly. I’ve seen the name Pease written out in numerous ways, my favorite odd-ball being Race, and all just because the indexer had a hard time decoding the census taker’s handwriting. I’m certainly not criticizing the indexers in any way, I myself have incorrectly read censuses only to read the index and have an “ooohhhh…” moment. It’s not always easy to key records and even the most crisp and clear images can still have horrible penmanship scribbled all over the page, not to mention just honest errors in the images themselves. And so, it is other people who have fixed errors than led to my ease of finding other relatives that makes me look back and think to myself, gee, I’m really glad I noticed that random mistake on this random person on this census (usually someone who was a neighbor to a relative) and fixed it, because now maybe someone who has been looking for them can find them. It’s worth every millisecond it takes to edit the names if even just one person finds one record because of me. And it’s that feeling that makes me want to continue helping where I can.
