The gift of a book

On October 31, I had a phone call about 12 pm from Sheila (one of my cousins on the Ing line). She said that she was at the Darwell corner, on her way to Edmonton and she was wondering if we could meet. I suggested the main McDonalds restaurant in town. Because of COVID, my wife's doctor asks her to avoid contact with other people, so I hesitated to invite them to our home, although I would like to have done so. I phoned Lloyd to invite him, but he was in Devon. So I met Allan and Sheila at McDonalds and she gave me a copy of the Memoirs of her mother Violet (Suter) Weinhardt. And she gave me an extra copy for Lloyd, if he would like it. 

I have enjoyed reading it, and I found that her father had an older brother Herman, at Vanderhoof, BC. And I found Herman's death certificate on the BC Archives site, which gave his birth place and his father's name. Then I found the passenger manifest which also pinpoints his birth place. It is great fun.

In the FamilySearch Family Tree, I found that someone had already created a record for Arno and his parents. I added his brothers Herman and Eric to the Family Tree. 

Over the next few days I also did research on the spouses of Violet's brothers and sisters. I enjoy doing this.

Thank you Sheila!

Indexing again

I love digital images of official records. They can help me to prove a pedigree. But they have a serious flaw. They need to be indexed before they are computer searchable. Once they are indexed, it takes only a few seconds to do a computer search for the name, date and place of the event. But until they are indexed you cannot. 

Admittedly, you can sometimes search through un-indexed digital images manually, but it is a slow and tedious process. And after a while of looking for the "needle in the haystack", it becomes very easy to miss the record you are looking for. 

A am very grateful for indexers, who do the tedious work of indexing, So, I am indexing again to help. My biggest problem is finding an indexing project where I can feel that I am making a positive contribution, Back in the spring, I enjoyed the 1851-1852 census of Canada West. When it was finished, I floundered, I tried a couple of other indexing projects, then I gave up. In recent weeks I tried again, with more success. For me, the most essential factor is probably legibility. I was indexing Northumberland UK records successfully, until I started getting batches that I found illegible, 

Then I switched to South African death records, written in a combination of English and Afrikaans. The Afrikaans language and unfamiliar African names have been an occasional challenge, but the records are usually very legible, Eureka! I will stick to this project until it is finished, then I will try to find another project that is nicely legible.

Because each project has a certain "learning curve", I like to stick to any particular project until it is completed. That way I am much faster and more accurate. At present, I am trying to complete 10 batches of 4 records per day, which takes me less than 2 hours. 

I like to use ClipX, which remembers the 25 items most recently copied to the Windows clipboard. (If it was not available, I would use the Windows 10 clipboard history function.) That way I can write "Kaap Provinsie" or "Sardget, Riebaliwes, Malmesbury" by pressing the Win+V keyboard shortcut. I am a poor typist, and any tools that can help me are appreciated. 

Onward and upward! I hope you have a joyful Christmas and much success in 2021.