Profile managers: Stephanie Ward [send private message], Joyce Rivette [send private message], and Jacqueline Girouard [send private message]

The Gulf Coast Hurricanes

The Gulf Coast Hurricanes is a challenge team whose core focus is on profiles associated with Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. However, you are not restricted to that and may work on any profiles you wish!

Goal

Our mission is to add valid sources to as many Unsourced Profiles as possible. For convenience, this page contains links to lists of unsourced profiles relevant to all U.S. Gulf Coast states.

About the Source-a-Thon

The Source-a-Thon is an annual WikiTree world-wide event, where Wiki Genealogists from all over the world will be participating together, at the same time. It's a fun way to focus on improving our unsourced profiles with valid sources, using teams and competition to motivate us!

• Registration deadline: Wednesday, October 2nd, at midnight EDT
• Start: Friday, October 4th, at 8:00 AM EDT (GMT -4)
• End: Monday, October 7th, at 8:00 AM EDT

Here is a time zone calculator if you need help figuring out the right start and end times in your time zone.

How to Join

Joining the team is simple! All you need to do is post an ANSWER to this registration post, and mention the Gulf Coast Hurricanes!

Team Chat

After you've joined, be sure to go to our G2G Team Chat page to introduce yourself, and check on status updates and other team news! This is where we can get answers to our questions, get acquainted with one another, discuss our team's progress and cheer each other on!

2019 Team Members

1. Joyce Rivette, co-captain - bib #26
2. Steff Mandarino, co-captain - bib #44
3. Edie Kohutek - bib #13
4. Jackie Girouard - bib #98
5. Gigi Tanksley - bib #139
6. Liat Boucher - bib #140
7. Dale Ladnier - bib #188
8. Randall Hebert - bib #433

Source-a-Thon sticker

... ... ... participated with Gulf Coast Hurricanes during the 2019 Source-a-Thon, adding sources to 100 previously unsourced profiles.

As a participant in the Source-a-thon, you can insert the following text into the biography of your personal profile page:

{{Source-a-Thon|team=Gulf Coast Hurricanes|year=2019|sources=100}}

This will include the sticker on your profile. Your name will automatically appear, but you need to enter the total number of profiles you sourced once the challenge is over.

More details about how to use the Source-a-thon sticker.

Hurricanes Spreadsheet

We now have a workspace on this spreadsheet for the "G C Hurricanes" team, to help us select portions of the Unsourced lists to work on! The tab or sheet is customized with links to the Unsourced profiles lists for the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, subdivided by century. Steven Tibbetts has graciously provided the workspace, which also includes a chat function that is shared by all teams.

There is a section on our sheet below the state tables which lists each team member, and provides space to enter what you are currently working on during the challenge. This is an effort to reduce people colliding with each other when selecting profiles to edit.

The process for using the sheet is this:

1. Before starting on a batch of profiles, review the areas already selected or completed by others to make sure it hasn't already being chosen.
2. Enter your choice in column B next to your name. Please try to keep it at a reasonable number of profiles. For example, try to select smaller blocks in decades rather than centuries, preferably blocks of about 200 or fewer profiles.
3. Work on sourcing the profiles in the block you selected. For every profile in which you've added one or more valid sources, be sure to remove the Unsourced template and/or category before saving. After saving, don't forget to select the Challenge Tracker at the top of the saved profile to record your point!
4. When finished with the block of profiles, go back to the spreadsheet and copy the info from column B to the next empty cell to the right, starting at column C or higher.
5. Repeat!

Use of the spreadsheet doesn't guarantee that you will never collide with anyone. There will always be instances where a person was working with another team, or independently, or on their own unsourced list, or from a different list than the ones we are using. But the spreadsheet will reduce the frustration of these collisions a great deal ,and is highly recommended.

Note that you are not limited to just the unsourced profiles in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi! You can also work on:

1. Profiles in other unsourced categories. Start here to browse through all Unsourced Profile lists by location or project.
2. Any unsourced profile, even if they are NOT in the unsourced category! There are tens of thousands of these profiles that need attention. They are harder to find, but you can usually find a few if you check other family members linked to an unsourced profile. This is especially efficient for including a census record for each member of the family on that census.

Lists of Unsourced Profiles

Below you will find tables containing unsourced profile lists for each state in the U.S. Gulf Coast area. Note that each listing has profiles broken down into groups on 4 different lines, divided by century. The 4 groups are described as:

1. Category: …, Unsourced Profiles - profiles marked as Unsourced for that state. This is the fastest and easiest to use for each state.
2. Location: …, Category:Unsourced Profiles - profiles marked with the general Unsourced category but not identified by state. It is created from Unsourced profiles not included in Group #1, which contain a location using either the full state name or the postal abbreviation. This list is not always as clean as group #1, and may include profiles that are NOT in that state. For Texas and Mississippi, the list works well since "TX" and "MS" don't generally have another meaning. However for Louisiana it's mostly a mess because "LA" is part of many location names in France, Spain, Canada and other places. Much effort has been made to glean Louisiana profiles from this group and move them to group #1, so for Louisiana you can generally save yourself some time and ignore this 2nd line.
3. Location: …, Suggestion 802 & 803 - empty or nearly empty profiles. It's a small list, and may be difficult to source since there isn't as much information in the profiles. By definition, an empty profile is unsourced. For these, if you add a source, before saving the profile please make sure the following minimum required structural elements are also included:

   == Biography ==

   == Sources ==

   <references />

   If you search and don't find any sources, it is recommended to make sure the following structural elements are entered before going to the next profile: [Update the Research Note to reflect where you searched.]

   {{Unsourced|state_name}}

   == Biography ==

   == Research Notes ==

   Used RootsSearch app to find sources on Ancestry, FamilySearch, and Find A Grave, with no results. ~~~~

   == Sources ==

   <references />

4. Location: …, Suggestion 131-134 - profiles without dates, but estimates based on linked family were used to place them in a century group. It's also a small group, and may contain some good possibilities. Just be aware some profiles may already be sourced.

Following are the most recently-generated tables for locating unsourced profiles in the Gulf Coast area.

Louisiana

Unsourced profiles for Louisiana.

Table prepared at 21.05.2024 08:10:08 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Region is Louisiana). Profiles: 294296

Mississippi

Unsourced profiles for Mississippi.

Table prepared at 21.05.2024 08:09:04 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Location is Mississippi,MS). Profiles: 289663

Texas

Unsourced profiles for Texas.

Table prepared at 21.05.2024 08:10:42 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Location is Texas,TX). Profiles: 783815

Alabama

Unsourced profiles for Alabama.

Table prepared at 21.05.2024 08:08:17 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Region is Alabama). Profiles: 442857

Florida

Unsourced profiles for Florida.

Table prepared at 21.05.2024 08:03:10 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Location is Florida,FL). Profiles: 255787

Help and Tips

• General Info about the Source-a-Thon
  • How points are counted
  • List of Prizes
• Points Tracker - to see a current ranking of teams and users during the challenge
• Hangouts Chat Schedule - every 4 hours around the clock, announcing progress and prizes
  • Prize Winners! - posted after every chat
• How to participate in the challenge
• What profiles count as unsourced?
• Video walk-through - this was made for the 2017 challenge but should still work the same way
• Space:Sourcing_Primer_-_Instructional - Instructional sourcing primer created by Steven Tibbits