15,000,000 new records on Pilot FamilySearch

Approximately every two weeks the Pilot FamilySearch Web site adds new records. This last week, as of December 8, 2008, FamilySearch announced the addition of 15,000,000 new records to the site. In an article in the Mormon Times, author Michael De Groote quoted Paul Nauta, FamilySearch public affairs manager as stating that "We've got close to 150,000 active volunteer indexers indexing about a million names a day. These particular censuses are almost done. The 1870 (census) is around 99 percent done, and the 1850 (census) is not too far behind."

The article went on to indicate that the 1850 census additions were 2,027,454 indexed records for Alabama, Indiana and Missouri. There were also additions for the 1850 census (slavery) of 869,076 records in the states of Alabama, Missouri and South Carolina. The 1850 census (mortality) has 37,990 newly indexed names from the states of Alabama, Indiana and Louisiana.

The Pilot FamilySearch files have some of the best images I have ever seen of these early records. The records are available from the pull-down menu for Search Records on FamilySearch.org. The same records are also available through the site for FamilySearch Labs.