Sometimes new genealogy researchers complain when there are gaps in records or digitized documents that are hard to read. As an official “old-timer,” I want to point out that for genealogists, this is the best of times. In 2002, the 1930 U.S. census was released to branches of the National Archives and was accessible only at those locations. There was no every-name index until a year later when volunteers completed the task. Printouts of whole census pages came out on 11×17 sheets of paper. Some of us still have those unwieldy rolls of paper in a closet somewhere.
It wasn’t until 2012 that the 1940 census was released to the public and close-up focus and snipping tools enabled us to save the pertinent information in our documents. We’ve come a long way. Likewise, as an old-timer, I remember sending checks to purchase birth, marriage and death records and Civil War compiled service records that are now on
line. We also now have access to new records that are being added daily to our online databases.
Since 2012, digitization of documents and photos has allowed researchers to view and preserve images of records that support our research conclusions. I recently read the digitized original will of the second husband of my ancestor’s first wife which named all three of her children by her first husband who were still alive 40 years after their births. I was able to access the will on FamilySearch. org due to that site’s fantastic dedication to digiting their documents.
If you are grumbling about the cost of a subscription to Ancestry or puzzling over access to documents on FamilySearch.org, take a minute to do the happy dance to celebrate all that is available to us from the comfort of our living rooms as we work to reconstruct our family history.
Carol Cooke Darrow is a professional genealogist who teaches the free CGS Beginning Genealogy class on Zoom on the second Saturday of each month. Register at cogensoc.us.