World Archives Project

It is estimated that well over 1/3 of the population of the United States can trace their ancestry through New York at one time or another.  Me?  I have a 5^th great-grandmother (Charlotte Bouton) who was born in Rensselaer County, New York in 1780.  On another line of my family, my 3^rd great-grandfather (David Heaps) emigrated from England into New York on 23 Jun 1864.  What about you?

Some of you may have noticed the blog post over at Ancestry.com this week about New York celebrating their 400^th birthday.  Stefanie highlights some of the New York record collections available to search on Ancestry.  But, here at the World Archives Project we have been keying some New York records that aren’t yet online.

Back in June, you may remember, Anna posted about the celebration that is upon us, where she issued a challenge regarding the New York Naturalization Indexes.  I’m happy to report that thanks to your efforts that project is now 100% complete.  It is currently in post-processing by the folks here in our Document Preservation department where they are preparing the data and images to go online.

But, we still have two active New York projects.  The first, New York City Naturalization Indexes, is over 50% complete thanks to the efforts of over 2800 of you.  The other, New York Naturalization Originals, is about 4% complete.

Now that may not seem like much effort has been expended.  But, let me help put this into perspective.  This New York project is the largest project we currently have running.  And the next largest project is almost half its size.  So, great job to all of you who have put so much time and effort into these very valuable records.

With all of that in mind, and in the spirit of Anna’s challenge a few months ago, I’d like to issue a little challenge of my own.

Since we began keying the New York Naturalization Originals, we have averaged about 200 image sets a day, collectively.  I’d like to see if, for the rest of September, in honor of the 400^th birthday of New York, we could, as a group, submit 400 image sets per day for this project.

I’ll enter a daily tally here in the comments to keep you posted about how we are doing.  And I promise to do my part!

Until next time – Happy Keying!

P.S. – If you would like to learn more about New York genealogy research be sure to register for the New York City Research webinar scheduled for Wednesday (16 Sep).  And while you are there, catch the replay of the Keying Tool demo Anna, Melissa and I did this past week.