Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Paying It Forward...In A Different Way

 


Many of us genealogists embrace the concept of "paying it forward," meaning we help with projects to index records held in various repositories. Many of us do SCRIBE and right now many are finishing up work on the 1950 census. 

My family roots go back to St. Clair County, Illinois, right across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri. With so much of my ancestry there, I wanted to help index their records........ of course with the selfish thought of finding new information on my family!  I've been working on indexing birth records from 1914 and 1915...... the project coordinator there emails to me the pages, I index them according to the directions they provide, and email my finished work back. Easy peasy. And it feels good to help.

I must share that I've come across some very interesting first names:  Mary America,  Author,  Horrilia,  Leabilla,  Meurrill,  Alebartile,  Toleitha,  Loreinne,  Ozello and Golla. 

And those mostly German surnames! Schmisseur, Sagovec,  Schaeperkoetter,  Rujawitz,  Ruddriegel and Sasinowski.


In all fairness, I applaud those names for they say to me that the immigrant ancestor was literate, knew how to read and write and how his name should be spelled. Every time his name was recorded, he must have looked over and watched to make sure it was written correctly. Kudos to them for doing that for sure. 



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