FamilySearch and it’s partners (findmypast.com and Archives.com) and volunteers (us!) have completed the indexing of six states: Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia, and New Hampshire. They are all searchable by name.

At the time of this blog post, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming are all showing 100% completion. Sometimes a complete state gets reverted to less than 100% for various reasons, but this group of states should be the next ones available. After the indexing and arbitration is complete, it still takes a bit more time to prepare the indexes for searching; they say about 10-14 days. Currently, about 30% of the census is indexed. At this rate, they are predicting a complete census by July or August.

Ancestry.com has Delaware, Nevada, and Washington DC completed. They have integrated Steve Morse’s one step tool for finding the Enumeration District (ED) into their site for browsing the images.

MyHeritage was the first site to give us a searchable index. Their site says that you can search New York and Rhode Island by name, but a search there clearly reveals that they have not completed all of New York, so it is unclear exactly how much is available. Unlike the other sites that are uploading only by completed states, MyHeritage appears to be uploading each county as it becomes available, but they do not state which counties are finished.

Happy Census Searching!

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW), in partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington (JHSGW), is raising funds to design, print, and distribute a new brochure about Jewish history in Arlington National Cemetery (ANC). It will include information about prominent Jews buried in the cemetery and discuss Jewish burial rites in relation to the cemetery with touches of the history of Jews in the military. Special monuments like for those for Space Shuttle astronauts, Confederate soldiers, and the new Jewish Chaplains Memorial will be included.

In 2008, JGSGW embarked on a project to index the Jews at rest in Arlington National Cemetery. The team of volunteers walked the grounds of the cemetery and photographed all markers bearing a Magen Dovid (a Jewish star). A database was created and is searchable at http://anc.jgsgw.org/index.htm. The data and photos were also donated to JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). They currently have entries for 5,219 Jews buried in ANC.

In March 2012, JGSGW donated $3,000 to the effort to create a new brochure about the highlights of the tour the JHSGW has hosted for years of the Jewish sites and history at ANC. They are asking for donations to reach the goal of $10,000.

Donations may be sent to: ANC Fund, c/o JGSGW, PO Box 1614, Rockville, MD 20849.

This message was sent to us last month from JGSGW, with a photo of the new Jewish Chaplains Memorial. That picture can also be seen on their web site here.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness is back!

Begun in 1999, RAOGK was online for just over a decade, providing genealogists a list of volunteers in the US and internationally who could help with things like quick look-ups and cemetery photos. The site grew to have 4300 volunteers all over the world, helping genealogists reach local records that they otherwise could not obtain. Volunteers did the work for free, only asking for reimbursement for actual costs involved, such as photocopies or postage.

RAOGK’s creator, Bridgette Schneider, passed away in November 2011. Shortly before her death, the site experienced some problems and was taken offline. Facebook groups quickly emerged to try to take the place of this powerful resource.

But now it’s back, in the form of a wiki. (A wiki is a user-generated site; anyone can contribute to the content of a wiki, like Wikipedia.) The information from the web site was able to be saved and set up on the new wiki. Unfortunately, all the contact information for the volunteers was not publicly available and therefore is not on the new site.

Those who used the site in the past, or anyone who wants to be a new volunteer, is welcome to sign up for an account and become a RAOGK volunteer.

MyHeritage has just announced that they have two million 1940 US Census images online, and the first searchable index.

From their press release:

MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web today, announced the availability of the first indexed records from the 1940 US Census, searchable for free by names, facts, and other criteria, on http://www.myheritage.com/1940census. In addition, MyHeritage has published two million images of the 1940 US Federal Census out of the total 3.8 million, with complete availability of all images expected in less than 24 hours.

The highly anticipated searchable indexed records and images are amongst the very first to appear on the Internet as millions of people rush to satisfy their curiosity and access one of the most significant and meaningful sets of historical records ever to be released. The first indexed records come from Bristol County in Rhode Island, with a deluge of additional records to be added by MyHeritage each day. The images currently available … cover all of New York, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia, Rhode Island, Missouri, Wyoming, and Nevada. Images for additional states are added every hour.

MyHeritage is the only provider to make the 1940 US census searchable in 38 languages. … The census images are also currently available on the additional historical content sites owned by MyHeritage on http://worldvitalrecords.com/1940census/ and http://familylink.com/1940census/ – with initial searchable indexes expected to be live soon on these web sites, and to grow throughout 2012.

While genealogists around the world are searching for their relatives by using addresses to look up enumeration districts, then scanning through pages of records, previous US censuses have been indexed by several genealogy sites, including MyHeritage and WorldVitalRecords. MyHeritage is the first site to provide an online searchable name index of any 1940 US census records.

What this particular press release didn’t mention is the search technology available at MyHeritage. As records are indexed, they will automatically match up the names to the people found in users’ trees on their web site, alerting users to the census listings even before they may know the location has been indexed. The first states that MyHeritage made available for browsing on April 2nd were New York and Rhode Island.

It is April 2nd and it’s Census Day!

At midnight, three companies picked up their copies of the census from NARA and are already busy uploading the files. As of 12:30am MDT, Ancestry.com has some images available for DC, Nevada, and it appears they have just begun to upload Maine. There will probably be more by the time you read this. No sightings yet on some of the other sites, but they will have some available later in the day.

At 8:30am Eastern Time (6:30am Mountain), there will be an opening event webcast from NARA on their 1940 census site. At 9am, all of the images for the entire country should be available at that site. NARA is not creating an index, so you will need ED numbers to find any records. Also keep in mind that their servers may not be able to handle the traffic, so have a little patience and check on the other major sites that are also hosting images to see if they have uploaded the locations you need: FamilySearch.org, Archives.com, findmypast.co.uk, Ancestry.com, and WorldVitalRecords.com. The images will be free on all of the sites.

In addition, Ancestry.com has made available one billion records from 1930-1950 on their web site until April 10th. Some of the records in this collection include the 1930 census, city directories, obituaries, birth indexes, marriage details, naturalization records, and more.

And don’t forget to sign up to index. Our group, UJGS, still has only one member.