Hi Everyone
I saw the announcement of the PROJECTS mailing list before Christmas and
signed up. It would appear that, like most others, I have not had time to
describe my work over the past few weeks.
My work is initially that of a transcriber (York Township 1851 and 1861, and
the three Toronto Wards east of Yonge for 1861). This work has been done for
the Toronto Branch of OGS and they seek a proofreader before it can get out
into the public domain. They asked me to write an article on my work for
Toronto Tree and this appeared in Sept-Oct 2007.
Transcribing an area usually makes me want to know more about individual
families than is available in a single census entry. Therefore, I have
attempted to match the 1861 York Township to the 1851, and establish where
individual families lived within the township. After that, out come the
Ontario Marriage Registers and the entries on Mary Crandall's website, and I
attempt to find the marriages listed both before and after the censuses. The
potential is there is to refer to York County Biographies and published
family histories where these exist. It is a huge enterprise, but I'm retired
and have plenty of time to work on it.
I use Excel to arrange the data in the first place, and then export to
Access where I can place the indexed information in forms. Although I am not
a programmer, making Access databases from tabular information such as
censuses was not difficult. It allows me to place forms covering the 1851
and 1861 censuses beside each other so that I can identify individuals, both
in and out of families, at either end of the decade.
What are other people doing? I am sure there's plenty of knowledge we could
share.
/cheers
Pat Jeffs