San Francisco Mortuary Records – 2010 Update!

There is exciting news for researchers with San Francisco ancestors! The San Francisco Mortuary Records Project is moving forward on two fronts with new records available for indexing at FamilySearch and the announcement of a database update at SFgenealogy.com.

In case this record set is new to you, the project was initiated by the California Genealogical Society and Library and is a cooperative effort with SFgenealogy.com, the San Francisco Public Library, the Genealogical Society of Utah and FamilySearch Indexing. It is the culmination of several years' work to bring the digital images of thousands of mortuary records, stored by the Halsted Gray Mortuary in San Francisco, to researchers all over the world. The records are a significant genealogical find because of the richness of their detail and the miraculous way they survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

The records include the complete holdings of the first mortuary in San Francisco, undertakers N. Gray & Co., from the day it opened - July 1, 1850. In all, the project includes the surviving records of several mortuaries that merged with either Halsted or Gray, over the years. The records contain information from financial ledgers, cemetery records, removal records and headstone notations. Many have obituary clippings.

Rose Pierson of FamilySearch Indexing informed us that the next batch of U.S., California, San Francisco - Mortuary Records, 1850-1917 are up and are ready to be indexed. If you want to participate you better hurry. It is a small batch and the work will be completed quickly. If you are already signed up to be a volunteer indexer, just sign in. If not, you will need to register at the site.

I also received this press release from Ron Filion of SFgenealogy.com: 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The free, online San Francisco Mortuary Records 1911-1974 Database at SFgenealogy has been updated.

San Francisco, CA - March 25, 2010
SFgenealogy.com has completed the second phase of indexing for the San Francisco Mortuary Records Database. The second phase has added records from the Martin & Brown (A.W. Martin) mortuary to the previous Halsted & Company collection. The collection now spans from 1911 to 1974.

The database includes over 179,000 digitized images and over 70,000 unique names. The searchable index also includes advanced surname search options such as Soundex and Metaphone, and wildcard searching.

The current Halsted N. Gray - Carew & English, Inc. mortuary has merged and acquired various mortuaries throughout the years. It is one of the oldest and largest mortuaries in San Francisco. FamilySearch and the California Genealogical Society are indexing their earlier records.

Contact:
Ron Filion or Pamela Storm.

Update on San Francisco Mortuary Records Indexing

If you are interested in participating in the San Francisco Mortuary Records Indexing Project and you haven't signed up yet, you better get started because things are moving faster than anyone anticipated!

Rose Pierson of FamilySearch Indexing sent some updated statistics.

The project now has 3,975 batches (39,750 images). Each batch is indexed twice - "A" and "B" - an arbitrator will look again at a batch if the two indexers don't agree.

As of yesterday,

3,362 "A" batches complete - 84.58%
3,157 "B" batches complete - 79.42%
2042 Arbitrations complete - 51.37%

Rose thinks that at this rate, this portion of the project should be fully indexed sometime in August.

Next to be processed are the images from twenty-nine rolls of microfilmed mortuary registers. Included in these rolls are the records dating from the mid-1800s. These are a bit more complicated to set up for the indexing project since some of them are accounting records.

The bottom line is, if you want to participate, don't delay.

Arbitrators Needed: A Request from FamilySearch Indexing

We need your help! The number of batches being arbitrated is out of balance compared with the number of batches being indexed. Please spend as much time as possible doing arbitration, especially for the Washington State Deaths and Louisiana 1850-1954 Death Certificates projects. If the gap between the number of batches indexed and the number of batches arbitrated grows too large, indexing batches will not be assigned (even though they are available) until the arbitration numbers come back into balance. If you notice that a project is on the Download From… list, but the system states that there are no batches available to index, please download and submit arbitration batches as soon as possible for the same project. Arbitration is a vital step in ensuring a constant flow of data through the indexing pipeline. We sincerely appreciate your efforts.

Report on the First 24 Hours of the Mortuary Indexing Project

Rose Pierson of FamilySearch Indexing sent some statistics on the San Francisco Mortuary Project. She will be sending reports weekly.

The project includes 38,837 total images in 3,883 total batches.

After 24 hours:

814 total images have been indexed (81 batches)
1560 images checked out for A indexing (156 batches)
1140 images checked out for B indexing (114 batches)

I found time to process a couple of batches. The records were from 1895 (pre-earthquake!) and included one child who died at age 8 of tubercular meningitis. With the missing 1890 census, this is a child who never appeared in a U.S. census. The record gave her mother's name, another name that may be a sister and a note that she was placed in a vault in May 1895 and shipped to Albuquerque, New Mexico the next January (1896). Good stuff!

S.F. Mortuary Records Rise From the Dead

In a cooperative effort with SFgenealogy.com, the San Francisco Public Library, the Genealogical Society of Utah and FamilySearch Indexing, the California Genealogical Society is pleased to announce the start of the San Francisco Mortuary Records Indexing Project. The project is the culmination of two years' work by the entities involved, to bring the digital images of thousands of mortuary records, stored by the Halsted Gray Mortuary in San Francisco, to researchers all over the world. The records are a significant genealogical find because of the richness of their detail and the miraculous way they survived the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

The records include the complete holdings of the first mortuary in San Francisco, undertakers N. Gray & Co., from the day it opened - July 1, 1850. In all, the project includes the surviving records, up to 1920, of several mortuaries that merged with either Halsted or Gray, over the years. The records include notations from financial ledgers, cemetery records, removal records and headstone notations. Many have obituary clippings.

Rose Pierson of Family Search Indexing has been working diligently to ready the project for volunteers. The CGS project is now listed on the Current Projects page (scroll down to the bottom and look for the CGS logo.)

The Project Home Page gives three digital examples of how the records look and has a link to project-specific indexing instructions. Please take advantage of the training tutorials located under the "Help" tab.

I'll have more to say about the project in the coming days and I will report on my own indexing experience. (I did some beta testing and I guarantee you will be thrilled with the kind of information you will find.) I encourage everyone to use the comments section at the bottom of this post to let us know about your experience in the project.

Report On the First 24 Hours - July 22, 2008

Update - Friday, August 1, 2008


Update - February 11, 2011. Watch the YouTube video about our project!