Not only is the weather changing but our life situation is changing and the
situation at the archives is changing. We
have 27 more days to get the Washington and York county records done…….whew!
Of a morning it is cool and soon to be crisp (by Arizona
Standards at least) and I see more and more trees sporting red leaves. I hope that we get to see the fall colors
before we leave. They were magnificent
in Pennsylvania and I loved the fall there.
I loved the spring there and the summer, but it would have been even
better if someone could have canceled winter altogether. The ice and snow is no fun in Pa. or here in
Maine – and we had an easy winter last winter so the locals tell me.
It is the end of one more week and there are not too many
left to go. I am still happy about the
missionary conference and the spiritual uplift that it provided. It is a noticeable contrast between the spiritual
messages of conference compared to the cheating, killing and other chicanery
that we read about in the court cases we are preparing to digitize.
Jason thought he would be through with his digitizing today
but he has at least two more days to do because the images that he captured
were not good and have to be done over.
He says that in the BDM that he is doing there are 4.94 million names. Now, that’s a lot of people born in Maine,
married in Maine and died in Maine. Today
Anne said that there was a lady who called up to get the dates of her three
divorces – I guess marriage is something she does not do well? She was at least 3 years off target with one
of the marriages.
My assignment has been to flatten out the court records for
York County. Jeff has been humidifying
them for me and I have been flattening them out ready for digitization. He told me that we have now humidified 4cubic
feet of records. Each box is one cubic
foot packed in tightly rolled bundles of court papers (tighter than sardines ),
and I have just received the rest of the 4th box. He must think that I am superwoman or
something because he thinks that I will have them all written up by the end of
next week – yeah right! Jeff is going on
vacation for one week and he wanted to be sure that I had enough work to keep
me busy while he was gone……………..and might I add, and then some!
We received notification from the mission home tonight that
a family history couple will be coming to the New Hampshire Manchester
mission. We presume they will be coming
to Augusta to finish off the project we have started. We wish them luck…….they’ll need it. They are coming from Florida and while they
are here, they will avoid the Hurricane season – one reason to go on a mission
I suppose.
These early 1800’s court papers are interesting in that they
are almost like fabric when they are wet and like leather as they dry out. They really do have a high rag content. Jeff was telling me that Maine imported lots
and lots of mummies from Egypt for the linen wrapping that they had around
them. They were using the linen to make
paper but people started suffering from Cholera etc. and it was coming from the
mummies so they shut down the factories in Hallowell that were tearing the
mummies to pieces. Imagine that, grave
robbers in Hallowell tearing mummies apart to get the linen that they were
wrapped in? Apparently there was an
inexhaustible supply of mummies to it does not sound too far-fetched for Joseph
Smith to get a couple of Mummies and take the written records out of their
wrappings and translate them to give us the Pearl of Great Price. Makes me wonder what kind of mummies they
unwrapped in the factory in Hallowell and what kinds of Egyptian treasures did
they find and who regulated the importation and destruction of these mummies in
Hallowell? All kinds of questions come to mind over this.
Bill wanted to go to the YMCA today but they are closed for
deep cleaning and redoing of the gym floor.
I left him there to take the shuttle to FedEx and I stopped in Hallowell
to see a store then drove back to the YMCA and imagine my surprise to see Bill
Markham walking in the grounds. We did
not know that the Y had been closed for the cleaning event. So we just drove home, ate dinner and did the
laundry. Such exciting times while on a
mission to be sure.
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