There has been two couples before us (at least two couples) who were digitizing the records of the Archives of the State of Maine. They have since returned home and we are here to finish the job or be finished by the job, whichever comes first.
The records we are digitizing are Civil Court records and the books are about 3 - 4 inches thick, with heavy covers that have been adorned (at one time) with embossed leather. A lot of the leather has begun to disintegrate and so as we work with the books, bits and pieces of the leather just flake off. Still, as I handle these books, I am reminded of the historical time of life it really was for all of us. The book we just finished is dated from 1821 - 1829 and the next one, volume two of forty four in this section of digitizing, is 1830 - 1843. This is around the same time the Church was organized in Peter Whitmer's farm house in New York......6 April 1830 was the organizational meeting. I am amazed at the beauty of the penmanship of the clerk of court who hand wrote the record of each case. I am always admiring the binding of the books we work with and as I touch them I think of the historical time in which the events took place. Before we began work on the books, I was looking through one of them and read a case that is recorded there. It seems that two men went to a graveyard in the wee hours of the morning and exhumed a body. The clerk recorded that the body was in an advanced state of decomposition and that when they removed the body, pieces of it littered the area around the grave. The clerk recorded further that this was considered a heinous, immoral and evil act and that the sentence pronounced ........and at that time I was called to put the book on the machine to begin the digitizing and did not get to read the rest of the case. Tried to find it later but could not. I thought that the words "heinous, immoral and evil" were fitting descriptions of the act of grave robbing.
The clerk of courts had meticulous handwriting and it is so easy to read. It is too bad that handwriting has not been taught in schools now - it is beginning to be a lost art. My own handwriting is so terrible now from doing nothing but typing on my computer for many years and before that, typing on a typewriter. It was better to use a typewriter years ago so that my step mother would not have room to complain about my 'atrocious' writing. She should try to read Bill's handwriting - it is so small that you need something like a 5X magnifier to read it (if you can).
It needs to be said here that not only are these books bound in leather, the pages are quite thick and I suspect have a high rag content. I am thrilled that the ink has held up for over 200 years in the older volumes that have been digitized. The records we have right now are relatively young records - recorded about 180 years ago. So there are a number of lost arts represented here in this library - that of quality paper making, quality book binding and quality inks. I wonder if they are all acid free? We work in a very cool environment that is not only cool, it is also humidity controlled so that the paper does not deteriorate. Many years ago I visited the Carnegie Mellon Museum in Pittsburgh and saw a skeleton from the pyramids in Egypt - he was in a humidity/temperature controlled environment - I do hope that we do not end up the same as he is.
All jokes aside, I am in awe of the bookbinding of the volumes that we are asked to digitize.
I will take a picture of them tomorrow.
Our trainer is still here. He leaves tomorrow and he is very dedicated to his job.
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