Ancestry.com shows about 64,000 matches for deaths and 63,000 matches for births
For Vanderbrugh County or Evansville in their searchable Indiana WPA Index. About
one third-? of these are duplicates for the same person. Since these are already online,
paid access though, I don't feel the need to duplicate this for my county.
I'd rather do a project that doesn't duplicate something that's already
available.
There seems to be a demand for Naturalization Records from my county. Is this
the same in other counties? There is not an Indiana Naturalization Database on
Ancestry.com
Vanderburgh County had a large WWII work force. To have a job in one of the
factories, I think you had to prove you were a citizen. There was a Court set up
that issued delayed birth certificates to people who provided proof of when and
where they were born. There were 20,000 certificates issued in Vanderburgh County.
They are Superior Court records and entirely available to the public, unlike regular
birth certificates. This is a useful resource. Was it done in other Indiana Counties?
We could try promoting the Biography Project. I still have quite a few to do some day.
-Chris
At 06:02 PM 8/11/2005 -0500, you wrote:
A friend of mine is a volunteer for the KYGenWeb Project. She is
working on the Kentucky Vital Records Project.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kvrp/
Once in awhile, she will send me a death certificate to look at for a second opinion on
the handwriting. This will be an awesome resource with the actual images of the death
certificates accessible online for viewing and printing.
I am thinking Indiana needs to be thinking about a statewide project. I do not know of
death certificates such as these that would be available for Indiana. About the only idea
I have is to try to create a database of the WPA indexes that would be searchable. I know
some of the counties have already tackled these and hopefully they would be willing to
have the transcriptions included in a free access, searchable database.
In order to be searchable, they will need to be transcribed. I have access to a machine
that allows you to scan and save the images from microfilm and the complete set of WPA
film is available in the same library. These could be uploaded, so that volunteers could
transcribe them online. I do not know the technical end of this process. We would need a
project leader.
Is anyone interested or have other project ideas?