When I got up this morning there was a thick fog enveloping
the whole area. By the time we left for
work it had pretty much dissipated and I was disappointed that I did not get to
go walking. However, we got to work and
finished off the world war one draft index cards. It was a real relief to be able to get those
done.
The cards provided some interesting information. It asked for full name, place and date of
birth. Asked the person’s nationality
and for most of them “native born” was put in there. At first I thought this meant that they were
American Indians or something but then it asked the race and most of them were
White. Did not see any black or oriental
or Hispanic written in this space. It
also asked if the person was married or single, how old they are now, gave the
name of their registration board, asked the name and address of next of
kin. It also asked for the current
address and occupation. There was a
space there where it noted if the person was a delinquent or a slacker. It gave the registration number of the
individual as well. This is a wealth of
genealogical information for anyone to find and I am glad that so much stuff
was packed into these little 3x5 cards.
There were 13 or 14 folders of these names and there was between 1675
and 1775 names in each folder. Some were
less and some were more. When they first
brought these little boxes with the cards in them I thought we would never get
through them but we did because we figured out a system and the system worked.
Some of the occupations should be mentioned here. They included woodsman, laborer, school
teacher, physician, dentist, student, fisherman, trapper, shop assistant,
garage mechanic, shoe last maker, weaver, weaving machine repairman, salesman,
some were already serving in the military, some had already served. Some of the conditions of the men were
mentioned, curvature of the back, simple minded, missing an arm, or leg, or
foot, or fingers or hand. One man
claimed that he had 20 children.
We were so happy to have them done that we treated ourselves
to a walk in the plaza around the statehouse.
We were so cold in the archives room and I forgot to take off my sweater
when we were to leave the building and so when we got outside I began to roast
in the heat of the day. The flowers are
about done in the gardens and only the petunias show their happy faces to the
world. We are really so glad to be done
with the world war one cards.
In the afternoon we finished off the Caribou, Aroostock
county court records. As we worked
through these we found that most of the crimes were for being inebriated,
inebriated while driving, no license, no registration on the car, speeding,
failure to stop at a stop sign, selling (moonshine) liquor, licentious behavior,
adultery, lewd behavior, bigamy and non payment of child support. Really, not much different than the cases in
the court records that we have been digitizing since October last year.
The new operator of Christina’s digitizing machine came
today with Lorraine. Apparently Corin
decided that the place was too cold for her so they found another person. His name is Jason. He tried the machine but it growled and
groaned and spit and snarled at him so they called the repairman back. He was just in here fixing the machine, but
it still did not work at all, let alone slowly or with difficulty. After he was through, he encouraged the
people to get the machine synchronized, but I doubt if they can find the CD
that came with it that would allow that action to take place. So, it is still limping along but not as
badly as it was when Christina worked with it.
Our supervisor called today to see how we were progressing
and asked why we did not reply to his email.
Well we could not reply to it because it contained no question at all
but rather a statement that the work order was probably on our computer. Well, he asked what we were doing and I told
him that we were trying our best to decide what would be the best way to digitize
the records of Washington County. All the
folders are in boxes (300 boxes) and there are only loose papers in the manila folders
that someone has put the papers into.
The majority of the papers are about 8 ½ inches wide by 13 inches or so
but there are a lot of them that are only 8 inches square or 8 inches by 10
inches. Many of the pieces of paper are
brittle and threaten to fall apart at any moment when we touch them. He offered for us to have a conference call
over the internet to give instruction as to how to do this capture. I declined the offer. This would
take place Friday morning. We have had these instruction sessions over
the phone and they are horrendous and do not turn out well. I suggested that we do it next week when he
comes and he then told us he would be here on Monday. So Monday it is and we will be ready for his
visit. He expects that we will get the
whole 300 boxes of Washington County done as well as York County. What he fails to realize is that York County
is housed in 20x15 inch archive boxes, tightly rolled up and tied in bundles
and tightly packed into the boxes. They
will need to be unrolled, humidified, flattened out, put in manila folders and
cataloged in those folders and put in archival boxes like the Washington County
court records. He imagines that this can
all be done and finished up by September when we are slated to leave.
He then asked how many images we had captured this week and
I told him over 12,000 and so he said for us to take tomorrow off. Wowee!
A day off? Well, I never! We may not be in the archives the whole day,
but will have to be in there to do the weekly report and to drop off the
shuttle at FedEx.
After work we went to the store to get some birthday cards
to send out and while I was there I saw some fun things that I could get for
the kids to take to them when we get off this mission. We then went to a home where Bill and Bro.
McNaughten went last night to visit the family there. There were no signs of life at the house and
the vegetable garden in back was overgrown - perhaps they have moved. We went home in time for me to turn off the
crock pot. I had started some beans this
morning and had to come home to turn the pot off. We then went to the missionary correlation
meeting.
Bro. and Sis. Kader had ordered Pizza for all of us to eat
while we met. They got it from College
Take Out Pizza on Mt. Vernon Road. It
was really tasty. The house where we met
used to belong to Sr. Kader’s father but they are selling it. She had a garage sale last weekend and the
leftover things were in the front room.
I saw some really nice crochet pieces and some spectacular embroidery
pieces. One table runner was actually
hand woven. Aaah! Yes! I must get back
to weaving again.
We had thought to go shopping after the meeting, but it has
already been a long day so we came home.
I took out my computer glasses to work on this blog and the wing fell
off. They are really old glasses but I
cannot function with the wing broken off, so we will have to get a repair kid
from the store and get it fixed. I use them
all day at the archives.
Today Jacob had to go see the specialist in Omaha. Our thoughts and prayers are for him and for
his health to be preserved, however, we are not in charge in this department
and so we continue to pray for him and his welfare.
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