Working on SMETHERS branch of family and indexing on the World Archives Project

As I mentioned in my last blog post I have resumed indexing on Family Search.  I was working on the New York Naturalization project.  I thought I would try something different  so I begin indexing on Ancestry's World Archive Project as well.  I've been working on the Kansas (city and county) state census there.

Comparing the two I believe the indexing tools are fairly equivalent with a slight edge to Family Searches.  However, Family Search far surpasses Ancestry on project instructions, examples, help forums and accuracy ratings.  In fact on Ancestry there appears to be no way of knowing what changes had been made to your indexed records.  For that reason the frustration level is much higher working with the World Archive Project.  At least on Family Search you know what the arbitrator changed and if you do not agree you can request a further review.

For now I will continue to do some for each.

Also this week I was able to spend a lot of time on Ancestry working on my paternal 2nd great grandmothers family the SMETHERS (SMITH'S).  With the help of another researcher on Ancestry I was finally able to determine and prove her maiden name of WELTY.  So far it appears as though the most of the family have stayed in the Madison and Wayne County, Indiana areas.  A few (my great grandmother) came to Missouri and one or two to Kansas.  I have found several death and marriage records and many census records on Ancestry.  I also found some burial locations, and tombstone photos on Find A Grave.  The family tree grew by almost 30 people this week.

I still have much work to do on the Elias SMETHERS / Barbara WELTY family.  There are 9 children in the family and most (if not all) married and had children of their own.  I will be spending the next few weeks on this branch of the tree.