Genealogy and Volunteerism

There are many ways to volunteer your time to worthwhile causes.  I volunteer at the Bata Shoe Museum giving tours, mostly to school groups, and really enjoy that experience.  It fits with my love of history, particularly the everyday aspects of how people lived in various times.  It's surprising how much a shoe can tell about a person and the society they lived in.

Another aspect of my love of history is genealogy.  I've been tracing my husband's family tree for a number of years now.  I am slowly becoming the family's historian, getting calls when babies are born and people die just for the purpose of keeping records straight.  Sad and happy, but with the wide spread of families and very few family bibles, important.

This past weekend my Aunt-in-law called to give me some info and told me about her trip to Pier 21 in Halifax.  Her husband's father was a Homechild or Bernardo child.  He knew very little about his family, but while there found his father with two siblings on a ship arriving in Canada.  Well, I have an Ancestry.com membership and told my Aunt I would look into seeing if I could find anything more.  The miracles of the digital age meant that a few hours later I had his family researched back 4 generations.  The best part is that some very fuzzy family stories now have some answers and answers that remarkably fit to elements of the stories.  I am packaging up everything I have found and hope it gives my Uncle some delight in learning about his family.  I am sure it will.

You're asking now what this has to do with volunteerism.  A few years ago I tried doing some transcribing for the Free Gen project in Scotland.  At first I thought it was a doable project.  Transcribe the returns for an entire district for the census year 1841.  One year and over 1000 records later I felt like I had hardly made a dent and the guilt in being so slow was really bothering me.  I handed the project back unfinished and hope that at least the work I had done was able to be used.  Ancestry.com must have understood some of the challenges and potential of a public willing and eager to help transcribe.  They have created a wonderful method with software , the keying tool, and data to download in manageable chunks.  I am talking transcriptions that can be done in under one half hour.  You can be bored, pull one up, and finish it off while supper is cooking.  You need to be registered, but you don't have to have a subscription to participate.  All the records transcribed via this method will be made available to search for free.  Check it out under the collaborate tab on the main page.  It's like a do good quick fix!