I am in the last phases of preparing eight new Early New England Families Study Project sketches for publication on americanancestors.org in the next week or so. I will give full details about each in an upcoming post.

First, I have to create the indexes. Indexing a database for the NEHGS website involves a lot more than a simple name or place index. Using an Excel spreadsheet, there are nineteen fields of information to be entered for each record. Most are self-explanatory, but I have added a few notes for those that may not be:

LastName:

AlternateNames: Other spellings of the last name used in the sketch (Browne, Smyth, etc.).

FirstName: Including middle and maiden names as applicable.

Principal: If the record is for the principal person of the sketch or his/her spouse, the numeral “1” is entered, which tells the program to generate a “Featured Name Only” entry that can be used in the search engine.

RecordType: Birth, marriage, and death, and “record” for anything that does not fall into the first three categories.

Year:

RecordCity:

RecordCounty:

RecordState:

RecordCountry:

SpouseLastName: If female, her maiden surname, or the surname of her most recent spouse.

SpouseFirstName: If female and previously married, this includes her maiden surname.

FatherLastName:

FatherFirstName:

MotherLastName: Her married surname.

MotherFirstName: Her first and maiden names.

Page:

Birth entries are usually straight-forward, but there are a few tricks with marriages and deaths [the following examples are compressed for purposes of illustration]:

SMITH, John, Marriage, 1678, DOE, Jane

DOE, Jane, Marriage, 1678, SMITH, John

SMITH, John, Death, 1700, DOE, Jane

SMITH, Jane [Doe], Death, 1734, SMITH, John

However, if Jane remarried after John’s death, another set of records is needed:

SMITH, Jane [Doe], Marriage, 1710, BROWN, Robert

BROWN, Robert, Marriage, 1710, SMITH, Jane [Doe]

And, of course, Jane’s death entry would change to:

BROWN, Jane [Doe] [Smith], Death, 1734, BROWN, Robert

In a regular name index, if the name John Smith appears on a page, regardless of whether the name applies to more than one individual, “John Smith” is indexed only once per page.  In the database, however, each separate person is indexed, resulting in entries such as [again, condensed for illustration]:

SMITH, John, 1, Birth, 1650, {father} SMITH, John, {mother} SMITH, Ann [Black]

SMITH, John, Birth, 1679, {father} SMITH, John, {mother} SMITH, Jane [Doe]

SMITH, John, Record, {spouse} BLACK, Ann

These three entries would represent John Smith, who is the Featured Name of the sketch, his son John Smith, and his father John Smith.

The result is the enhanced information you receive when you search the AmericanAncestors.org databases; see, for instance, this search for Peter Hobart.