I first worked on my children’s Belgian ancestors years ago when manual searches of records was the only option. When using the vital records from the 19th century, I used them the way I had other European records from the same time span. I looked in the “book” for the time period of interest and read through the entries for the years I thought included the person’s birth date. Then, if I had the correct person and had the names of the parents, I scanned the years before and after the birth to locate siblings.
I began my searches of these records using the same approach. I had never used the records before, but knew from the catalog description they were organized chronologically so I would use the approach I had used in church records for other areas of Europe.
Imagine my surprise when after I had spent some time manually searching records for the desired time frame and person of interest, I found indexes that had been created every ten years by the priest. I had never encountered these decennial indexes before. While indexes are not perfect, they would have saved me a great deal of time, particularly when I had a specific name and time frame in which to look.
Moral-the first time you use any “new” record, familiarize yourself with the whole thing first, don’t assume that it is like every other one you have ever used.
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