Searching for a woman's family

Recently when I was working on some family history at familysearch.org (a free website where you can search for your ancestors). I discovered Family Search Indexing. A website where "Volunteers extract family history information from digital images of historical documents to create searchable indexes that assist everyone in finding their ancestors."

I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the software and spent an evening going through all the tutorials and then downloaded my first project. It was some very interesting marriage records, which were all seperate pieces of paper, not the typical items listed in a column.

I have always been facinated with old records and things, even if they don't have anything to do with my own family. Just so you understand, I also enjoy walking through a cemetary. I am facinated knowing that these people lived, and had families. I love reading headstones and seeing how old people were when they passed away and wondering what their life was like. I know that this may sound a bit bizarre to you, but that's just one of the things that makes me tick. With this said, it should come as no surprise that I found family search indexing as addicting as family history, if not more so, because you are actually accomplishing something with every keystroke!

Last night when I opened up some new documents to index, I found that indexing is also facinating to others in my family. One of my younger daughters sat down next to me to see what I was doing and was immediately sucked in. She began helping me by reading off the information for me as I typed it into the form. The whole time she kept wishing that she could do the indexing all by herself. She became upset when I looked at the clock and discovered it was an hour past her bedtime and I made her go off to bed. Not sure if that was the "family history bug" making her want to stay up or the "I'll do anything if I can stay up bug." Either way it was a great experience for the two of us to share.

As we indexed, my daughter was laughing at me as I got very excited when I found an unmarried sister-in-law living with a family. Why is that exciting? Because it can help you find a whole new line in this family silly! An unmarried sister-in-law, if she truly has never been married, now means we know the madien name of the wife in the family! Researching a woman's side of a family can be difficult without these little clues and so I get so excited about these clues!!! I love to find links in the family chain!!!