Names fascinate me and there are supposed to be meanings
behind them all. Well, sitting and just
writing the names of the various persons involved with the court cases, gives
me time to think about how some people got their names. Some are descriptive – Coolbroth was one of
them today and also Tarbox. In fact,
there are still folks carrying the name Tarbox here in Maine today. I wondered was passing thorugh a mothers mind
when she named her boy Trueworthy. Some of
the surnames have definitely English sounding roots while other defy
definition. Names like Googins, Dudly, Twombly,
Tripe, Guttridge and Sayward sound English to me, while Chadbourne and Cilly
sound French. Cannot say what country
Rappleyea and Scammaron come from. One
man had Greenleaf as his Christian Name but for the most part in 1802 people
relied on all the Biblical names for Christian Names and there are hosts of
Reuben, Abraham, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, Paul, Barnabas names in the
mix. Almost all the Old Testament names
are represented as well.
I have prepared 5 archival boxes full of humidified and
flattened out records from 1802 and am
working on 1803. These include records
that are continuations of court cases, new entries, estate settlements, non
entries and in 1803 I see that there will be a folder for complaints. Maine may have been very rural in the 1800’s
but there were plenty of court cases going on and for York county, the court
records are all on little pieces of paper and some were made to be larger by
tacking them together with sealing wax.
One record I put in a folder today was over 36 inches long – having been
tacked together with sealing wax and had other pieces appended to it as
well. So I put a note in with this one
for those who are coming after us to digitize the records,”Have fun with
digitizing this one”.
Art brought up 3 bundles of new entries from April Term
1803, that he had humidified and I unfolded them and put them between papers to
flatten them out. There is a good chance
that I will have them all put in folders by the end of Friday. All I do all day is sit there and write paper
dividers and collect the records and put them with the divider into a manila folder. When I have about 50 or so done like
that, I put the big Manilla folder in
the Archival Box. Whoever comes after us
will have to be very careful when they take these folders out of the box
because if they lose their grip, they will never be able to put them all back
together because a lot of the papers do not have any identifying marks on them
to say which court case they come from.
When the case was originally handled, there was a wrap put around the
collected papers and that is how they were held together. When I put the humidified papers in a folder,
all of them go together, and heaven help anyone who drops the collection.
Jason, who is doing the BDM on the machine, went home early
today. He is heavily involved with the “Jeckyl
and Hyde” play and has been burning the candle at both ends over it and it has
caught up with him. He may or may not be
back tomorrow – we will see.
Talked to David and Sara on Skype this afternoon; David had dyed his hair black and he has hair
– not shaved bald like he was when we left.
The kids have had fun with Uncle David and he has had fun with them but
he says that his back is still bothering him from the accident a few weeks ago,
that involved the van the crew were riding in.
Sara said that the doctors want Jacob to go see some contagious disease
specialists but there is no appointment made yet.
We went to the 99 restaurant with Marty and Sue tonight and
we had a great time. Bill and I were
celebrating having all our folders pass for last week. He is stressing out about not having ten to
twelve thousand images to turn in this week, but you cannot go faster than the
myriad sealing waxed together papers will allow. What we are doing now is very slow going but
slow is as fast as it gets if they want the images clear, and the original
records that we work with kept intact.
The spectacular thing that happened today was talking to Sara
and David and getting notice that our folders all passed for last week. What more can we want?
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