John wrote:
One example of a "private" institution doing a better job than
the government, at least in genealogy, and then I'll get off my
soapbox. I do a lot of French Canadian (Québec) genealogy.
I have many lines of ancestors going back to the very early 1600s,
and nearly all well into the 1700s. One or two lines go back to
the time of Columbus' voyage to the "New World". My research
is based on the superb birth death, and esp. marriage records kept
over centuries by the Roman Catholic Church, an institution whose
reputation has justifably fallen in recent years. These records span
both the orginal French and the later British governments, neither
of which maintained anywhere near as good or complete records
as the church did until very late in the 19th century.
Genealogists, Genealogy Societys and demographers have now
organized these records to such a degree that some genealogists
say the Québec Genealogy isn't really genealogy because it's too
easy!
So for all this, given a choice between a private group doing something
and the government doing something, I'd choose the private group
95% of the time.
John,
I don't think the Catholic Church maintains Population Census records. The
Federal government has done a pretty good job of maintaining these records
for the past 200+ years. Death records are maintained by the states for
non-Catholics as well as Catholics. Same is true of marriage and birth
records.
Seems that we are comparing apples and oranges again.
To each, his own. To all the folks who are filling up their filling
cabinets with photocopies of census records in case the Federal Government
loses them I say, "Lots of Luck". <Grin>
Lewis
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