Did my comment about "non-person people" yesterday leave you thinking I'm crazy? Not to worry ... my mental state isn't
that bad ... yet! I really do have a good explanation for you.
UPDATE: The crossed out info below is no longer applicable for
my website as the old Recent Updates link was renamed and moved to the menubar where there is a link for
New items. A dropdown menu underneath includes
Individuals with Recent Updates - the place to check for changes since your last visit.
My West Virginia Heritage website has a Recent Updates link at the top of each page - it's a great way to check for changes since your last visit. As currently noted at the top of that Recent Updates page,
"Website first published online on 08 September 2011 with 92 people (56 real persons plus 36 "census people" such as 1850 U.S. Census, Virginia, Marshall County)"
Now, getting back to the "non-person people" I mentioned in the first paragraph ...
Near the bottom of the website pages you can see the date and time the site was last updated, the total number of individuals, and this note:
(count includes "pseudo persons" for cemeteries, census records, etc.)
Those "pseudo persons" are the "non-person people" to which I've been referring. Within my genealogy database, I can create fake people who serve as convenient sources for making lists. Yes, I can hear you thinking, "well now,
that's as clear as mud!" Examples will help:
Cemetery person: Take a look at the
Fork Ridge Christian Church Cemetery person and you'll find that this "person" is actually a means for compiling a list of
real persons who were buried in that cemetery. That's the easy example; let's move on to another one.
Census person: As households were enumerated in a census (1950 and later), they were given consecutive family numbers. The enumerators worked systematically, whether traveling the length of a street in town or along a country road. Generally, the result was that consecutive numbers indicated "next door" neighbors - close numbers indicated families living near each other.
I created census persons such as:
1850 U.S. Census, Virginia, Marshall County. If I find a family who was enumerated in the 1850 census in Marshall County, I tie that family to this census person in my database. Now, increase that to
several families who are tied to this same census person. Look at this census person on the website, and you'll see that all those families are combined into a list of the households, sorted by the family numbers.
Not only is it interesting to see who lived next to who, it can often provide clues about families. Remember that back in those days, folks didn't travel all over the country like we do today. Odds were that the families of a bride and groom didn't live more than a few miles apart. Newlyweds often lived near their parents; and it wasn't unusual to find siblings raising their families in close proximity to each other - perhaps even on the same farm.
Bottom line ... my "non-person people" are nothing more than a way to create lists of people who have something in common. While it's great to have detailed information on each person's individual page, it's sometimes nice to see how several people correlate to each other ... and that's the beauty of having these "people" who don't really exist.
