NJMONMOU-L Archives

From: "Scott D. Peters" <>
Subject: [NJMON] Monmouth/Ocean searchable census cd-rom
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 01:32:08 -0400

A while back I may or may not have posted to the lists that Ocean County Historical Society was going to be producing a searchable cd-rom of the federal census for both Ocean and Monmouth Counties for 1850-1880 based on the indexing done by Margaret Britton Redden. Here's an update on that project.

It took me 7 months to proof the Ocean County microfilm against Maggie's indexes. This was partially due to unforeseen problems with poor quality film and the desire to be as accurate as possible. It also meant coping with technical problems and missing information. The file for one year of Eagleswood was only partial when I received it from Maggie. Fortunately, the entire file was printed for our shelf copies, so I could proof against it. But I had to recreate the data on the computer for more than half of it. There were also problems with some handwriting. Thomas W. Middleton's handwriting was especially irritating after a while as he was doing two towns and his handwriting was somewhat ambiguous at times.
The worst situation was Union Twp. 1860 and especially 1870. The quality of the film is poor in many instances, but these two records were positively abysmal. I was left with two choices: leave Maggie's interpretation alone and accept flaws due to illegibility, or try to recreate the parts that were, in some cases, completely obliterated or simply unreadable. I, of course, chose the hard way. Using the indexes before and after as well as other resources in the collection, including family files and newspapers, I was able to resurrect much of the previously useless data. I tried to be as accurate as possible and this was the only case where I broke my rule of recording exactly what the enumerator write. The result should be well received by folks whose families were from Union Township- Waretown, Barnegat, Forked River, Manahawkin. Much of this information would have been otherwise erroneous or simply lost forever.

Anyone familiar with Maggie's indexes will notice some major changes in the new indexing that forms the basis of the eventual cd. Among them is the correction of misread names and the elimination of standardized spellings of names. I recorded everything as it was written. I also expanded occupations to record exactly what was written. This means more information about an occupation in many cases. A minister in the old index may have expanded to Baptist or Methodist minister if that was how it was recorded. Much of this was originally due to Maggie truncating information to fit all of it onto a printable 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. For the cd, we are no longer bound by space constraints. Ret. Merchant, for example, now becomes Retired or Retail Merchant as the case may be. Some confusion was eliminated as was some possible confusion over birth places caused by the use of abbreviations and truncations for non-US states.
Another big change was the addition of the Personal Estate column to the 1860 census. Maggie left it out, we put it back in. We expect interest in this cd from researchers interested in statistical and demographic information as well as genealogical data. (I'm guilty as charged)
What we did not add back in, and I didn't think to do this until it was too late, was add the marital status column back in to the 1880 records. That could change.

With Ocean proofed and time running out on this grant funded project, it was decided not to give Monmouth the same attention. One reason is that there is approximately 6 times more data for Monmouth than there is for Ocean. A rough estimate is that it would take me about a year and a half to do Monmouth by myself.

So as it stands now, only Ocean County was proofed and the data as now at the developer, Diversified Programming. The deadline for the finished product is currently May 16th. We will not meet that deadline for a finished project. The NJ Historical Commission, which is funding this project understands that there will be a delay. They reviewed the current status of the project and determined that, since the project was written to include Monmouth County, we cannot leave it out as had been suggested to us. They want Monmouth in and they want it to receive the same attention as Ocean. Therefore, we now face the daunting and thoroughly draining process of preparing the mind-numbing task of proofing Monmouth County. As I said earlier, I estimate it would take me about a year and a half to do it by myself. We need a team to make this easier and quicker. Ideally the team should consist of people familiar with the town(s) they would work with, be familiar with varying handwriting sty!
les from the mid-Nineteenth Century and have at least a fair knowledge of the families in that part of the county. I have already committed to beginning with Howell and Wall. That will give me a chance to see what we're in for as we proceed. I don't anticipate the same surprises as we had with Ocean. Spot checking the film showed almost universally good quality and legibility and handwriting that, for the most part, didn't leave me scratching my head. (Oh that it could all have looked like one year of Pemberton, Burlington County. Handwriting so neat it looked printed. Ahhhhhhh.......)
So at least from a technical standpoint, Monmouth will be easy. It's just a monstrous undertaking.
There is also the possibility we will be able to add the resurrected 1875 Monmouth County enumeration currently being produced by the Monmouth County Archives. My experience with Union Twp., was bad, the 1875 enumeration is worse as they are dealing with literally fragments of documents. A lot of information likely is going to be lost due to the condition of the document itself.

So, at the very least, by the end of May we expected to have a working Beta version of the cd. It would be a fully functional disc that would allow us to search using the existing data. The data would be imperfect, but for an in-house reference source for us and a select handful of other facilities it would be perfectly useable until the "real thing" came along.

Now we find that there are major troubles with the data that will need to be worked out. Part of it may have been a formatting inconsistency that affected how the data fields were imported to the new database. We now need to clean up these problems before the development work can be finished, all of which is going to delay production of even the beta.
On top of that, I was once again reminded that if we had chosen to go with a web application, this whole thing would be done now (except of course for the revised Monmouth data.) But that was not my decision to make.

So what does this mean for you? It means that finding people in the Monmouth and Ocean Census for 1850-1880 can still be done easily if you know where and when. But we have to wait a little longer for the ability to beta test what we hope will be a way to search for someone across all four census years and in both counties. So if you don't know where someone was in 1870, we should be able to quickly find them for you if the disc works as we envision. Then when the final product is done, you can do it yourself. Beta discs will be given to select area facilities that have census on film for reference. These beta discs will be evaluated for any improvements that need to be made and will serve as reference tools. We will not release the beta to individuals, so don't ask.

In the meantime, look-ups can be done and results sent electronically for Ocean County directly from the current datafiles with no need to refer to the film for verification unless so desired. I tried my best to ensure the data is as exact a transcription of the original as humanly possible. Look-ups for Monmouth County will, at this time, need to be referred to the film to ensure the information indexed is accurate. We may miss people now but find them later when the proofing begins for Monmouth.

We do ask $2 for look-ups from non-members of OCHS. Members receive research assistance as a benefit of membership. That includes free look-ups as long as you don't flood our mailbox, virtual and otherwise.
But, while we do prefer receiving research requests by mail accompanied by payment, we do often try to accommodate requests by e-mail with the hope that you would send a donation later.

Requests about places, things and events not directly related to an individual or family specifically are, of course, always welcome and will be responded to as quickly as circumstances allow.
Never a charge to enlighten people about obscure facts and trivia of a general historical nature.

I will let the lists know when the beta is ready, then I will throw myself upon your mercies for a trial period to give the sucker a good workout.

Sincerely,

Scott D. Peters
Research Director/Archivist
Ocean County Historical Society
26 Hadley Ave., P.O. Box 2191
Toms River, NJ 08754-2191
(732) 341-1880



"Telling the Stories of Ocean County"

Historically Speaking
ALHFAM -FPIPN vice-chair for trivia, errata and miscellany


"The ordinary distinctions in society are often vague, and imply no just pre-eminence: rank and titles are
adventitious things and instead of designating merit or virtue, are frequently the baubles of imbecility, or
the sparkling decorations of meretricious pageantry"

William Griffith, on behalf, and by order of the New-Jersey Society for promoting the gradual Abolition
of Slavery, Twelfth Month (December) 20th, 1803

This thread:

• [NJMON] Monmouth/Ocean searchable census cd-rom by "Scott D. Peters" <>