WikiProject: Rural Records of the Southern United States

Welcome
Welcome to each of you who have joined J. Mark Lowe’s rural and agricultural records project! Mark indicates that you will be sowing a new field, writing genealogical advice on valuable records that most genealogists overlook, but which are key to unlocking the history of rural Southern families. We’re grateful to be able to help you share your legacy of knowledge with others! For a quick introduction to the wiki and to get a snapshot of the support that a couple of us at FamilySearch can provide, please see the project's Welcome page.

Contributors
Roylene Bailey mrks4 Melinda Henningfield mhenningfield Kathryn Hopkins Kathopkins Rick Koelz Rkoelz J. Mark Lowe Marklowe Gail Jackson Miller Gjmiller Michael Ritchey RitcheyMT Vicki Standing StandingVE Lori Thornton Tnlori Liz Walker Lizgwalker

Orientation challenges

 * 1) Register and e-mail your username to the team.
 * 2) Learn basic editing by tweaking your user page and e-mail the team when you're done.
 * 3) Learn intermediate editing on The Editing Tool and e-mail the team when you're done.
 * 4) Visit Help:Edit and Contribute to see all the kinds of instructions the wiki has for various things you'll want to do as you edit pages. (From any wiki page you can navigate to this by clicking Help on the navigation bar and then clicking Edit &amp; Contribute to the FamilySearch Wiki.)
 * 5) Read FamilySearch Wiki:Purpose and Appropriate Topics to understand what kinds of topics are inside (or outside) the wiki's scope. E-mail the team when you've finished.
 * 6) Be aware that editing on the wiki works best in Internet Explorer 7. (Yes, I'm a Firefox guy too, but the editing software on this site happens to work better in IE. And IE7 works better than IE6.)
 * 7) Check out Create an internal link and Create an external link to learn how to make hyperlinks on the wiki.
 * 8) Read FamilySearch Wiki:Guiding Principles to understand the culture of this wiki. This'll give you a high-level understanding of what to expect from other community members.
 * 9) Briefly scan the bold text in FamilySearch Wiki:Policies. Don't read it, just scan it and be aware that it's there so you can refer to it when needed. (Reading this word for word is a super cure for insomnia.)

Focus:
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia

Current Project Goal: (21 April - 8 May 2010)
1. Choose one of the Southern States in our group for your April-June focus. (Notify Mark of choice) 2. Obtain image copy of Agriculture Schedule within your focus state. (or ask Mark for selection) It would be helpful to identify an individual(s) that would be available on 1850-1880 population schedule as a farmer. We want to use these selections to create "HOW TOs" for Wiki users.

3. Choose an individual on the page to extract (Use forms on the Wiki) 4. Begin creating a list of Historic Farming Periodicals that cover the Southern States. Use Manuscript collections, WEB, Google Books, Periodical Index, Union List, etc. Add Periodical Title to Farm Magazine and Periodical page of Rural Records Wiki.

5. Participate in an online class with Mark on using Agriculture Schedules. (optional) Thanks, Mark