Reconstruction of genealogies from vital records: The Laredo Epidemiology Project

The Laredo Epidemiology Project is a study of the patterns of degenerative disease, particularly cancer, in the families of Laredo, Texas. The genealogical history of Laredo was reconstructed by the grouping of 350,000 individual church and civil vital event records into multigenerational families, with record linkage based on matching names. Mortality data from city death records are mapped onto these pedigrees for analysis. This paper describes the creation of the data base and evaluation of the links.