Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:13:59 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: slow genealogy
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> ronkean at juno.com 12/25/2006 9:02:48 PM >>>
>
>On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 12:09:17 -0500 (EST) "Keith F. Lynch"
><kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> In a few months his birthdate will show up at
>> http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/.  I suggest we lay the issue to
>> rest until then.
>>
>> That site bases their data on Social Security records, and that
>> government agency tends to be pretty careful about people's ages,
>> for obvious reasons.
>>
>> It's an amazing site.  But it does tend to run a few months behind.
>> Since it's intended for genealogists, I guess there's no reason for
>> it to be updated more often.
>>
>
>It is an amazing site.  I think that it is updated by the genealogy
site,
>from social security records, fairly often, i.e. about once a month.
The
>largest part of the delay is probably usually accounted for by the
time
>it takes for next-of-kin or executors or others to get around to
formally
>reporting a death to the Social Security Administration, with the
correct
>documention.  Then the SSA must verify the report, which takes more
time.
>
>One thing that can be done using that site is to check the prevalence
of
>various names, either first names, or family names.  For example, one
can
>easily find  that there are 2,203,881 people with the first name
'John'
>in the index.  There are 40,005 with the last name 'Lynch'.

... and 2 with the last name of Smoire.  (...the last name of a past
WSFAn... of, er, note...)

... and 92 with the first name of Johns.  & there are 4 named: Johns
Hopkins.

mjw