I’ve been working on an index for the huge binder that Katie lent me a while back which contains the genealogy of the Ringwald, Thinnes, Nolan, and Donnelly families. The binder is 302 pages long with vital records, photographs, and photocopies from books and newspapers. I’ve shown it to several local genealogists, and they are all highly impressed with the sheer depth and breadth of the work, not to mention the organization and incredibly thoroughness with which Katie undertook her former 4-H project. I personally have had little to contribute as of yet beyond a ship passenger list and adding a few dates. I’m on the verge of getting some more names and identities, but I want documentation beyond census forms before adding to the collection. Still, for the entire photocopied binder that will act as a duplicate for Katie’s, I’ve made an index. A twenty-eight and one half page index, double columned.

I’m not even sure how many hours have gone into this, and I can’t tell you yet just how many names are in there, but DAMN, that was an undertaking. I included not only the names of people we’re related to, closely or distantly, but every single name in the binder that was legible enough for me to read. Crazy? Just a little, but you never know when someone’s going through looking for a particular family and the index leads them to the one person they’re looking for. The odds of that happening are slim, but it’s still possible.

Whenever I make the Doyle/Strange binder for Ian’s family (once I get past his grandparents), I’ll probably make some sort of indexing system as well though it will have to be updated fairly regularly. That means I’ll likely hold off on the index until I have a considerable amount of material to go through. That… That’s gonna take some time. I don’t make it up to Martin all that often to visit the courthouse, and besides, a lot of his family also lived in Daviess. It’s interesting, nonetheless.

Right now, we’re gonna get Chinese food, so I’m gonna wander off and leave the matter of editing the index and counting names until later. I’ll try to remember to post just how many people are in there.