with this blog and genealogy lately. I tend to go back and forth between scrapbooking and genealogy, and right now it is genealogy all the time.
I have had a couple of neat finds and experiences this week while being so immersed. On several family tress on Ancestry.com, I may have find a couple of family links that I have been missing. I need to do some verifying, but even the "maybe" information is much better than what I had.
I also found an obituary for an aunt who passed in 1960. It was an interesting find in its own way. I'll share more about it in another post.
Today, I participated in my very first Scanfest at AnceStories. Genealogy bloggers and other enthusiasts get together once a month to chat while they scan in family pictures and/or documentation. Scanning is so boring... why not liven it up with chatting with other like-minded souls? It was great for me because I never would have put aside three hours a month for scanning without this nudge. I scanned everything I could (Some items are larger than letter size and will not fit on my scanner, so I will have to work on those another time.) of my father's, i.e., birth certificate, death certificate, Masonic items, marriage licenses, divorce decrees, an old driver's license, letters from his grandchildren etc.. It ended up being 42 items that I got scanned in today! I also learned some things from others on the chat and generally had a good time.
And to help you learn something today, the owner of AnceStories, Miriam, states that historical items should always be scanned in .tif format and at the very least, at 300 dpi. I scanned mine in at 600 dpi. Items can be edited and then saved as (using the Save As function) a .jpg, but always save the original as a .tif. Items saved as .jpg will become distorted as they are opened and/or edited many times. I have not always been good about this because I would be in a hurry and would just accept the default of .jpg on some programs. However, as of today, I will be making a diligent effort to always save as a .tif.
I also continue to transcribe the 1908 book, Middletown upper houses: a history of the North Society of Middletown, Connecticut, from 1650 to 1800 : with genealogical and biographical chapters on early families and a full genealogy of the Ranney family by Charles Collard Adams for including on the Internet. There are nine sections in all (about 40-50 pages each) and I am on Section 8. I have transcribed all but one section. All that just means that I am ready to be finished with it so I am working on it daily. This book was invaluable to me in my Ranney research so to pay back the kindness of those who shared it with me (it is out of print), I agreed to transcribe it. Little did I know that at least three years later, I would still be at it! However, it is amazing what you can accomplish working just 15 minutes at a time! (Thanks, FlyLady!)
Finally, please, if you are or know a Tapley or a Schwalls who is living (or descended from someone who lived) in Johnson County, Georgia; a Drake from Adrian, Emanuel County, Georgia; or a Ranney from Clinton County, Michigan, please share my blog with them! We may be related!
