Birth records with baby's male and female marked

thomasclarkjohnston1

Hi, I am indexing birth records from Virginia 1856 and in some cases there is a tick mark in both the male and female columns. How should I record the sex of the child?

Thanks!!

Melissa S Himes

Wow. That batch is going to be hard to do! What has happened is it has been pieced together but, the columns are off!

There are 7 Columns with headers:

White | Colored (Free) | Colored (Slave) | Sex (Male) | Sex (Female) | Born (Alive) | Born (Dead)

The tick marks are not aligned with the columns. You can click on the bottom icon in the vertical toolbar and open the reference images. If you look at reference image + 4 you will see the proper placement of the tick marks and the columns.

So on your batch:

The first name Major is a Male Slave and his owner is Christopher Satchell.

The second name is John T, a White Male and his father is Thos W Bull.

The third name is Nellie. This is where we can really see the problem with the columns. Nellie is most likely a female slave, not a male and the ticks marks are in both Dead and Alive and we know that is wrong. The same happens a little farther down with Sallie (a white female)

Record 6 - Charles E - is a white male born alive - and so on.

You almost have to index these by counting the columns and then indexing the demographics. Also the numbering on the second half of the image should help you keep these in line.

When the child is a slave, we don't index owners names in the father's column, but only in the owner's fields. You can read more on this in the project instructions.

Melissa S Himes

Is there any chance they are twins? It is always good to share the batch so others can see what you are seeing. To share a batch, click on the third icon from the right and follow the instructions.

thomasclarkjohnston1

There are other twins on the page but I don't think these are. Thanks for the tip to share the batch. Here it is. Thanks again!!

https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/9f7b550d-e493-47f8-b83e-44ba4c812f24

thomasclarkjohnston1

Yes, it has been a challenge. Your alignment tip helps! That makes sense. I am closely following the project instructions.