My Tangent - Return To My Smith Genealogy Transcription Project

Good Day,

Well last night I took the plunge and decided that I had better start back with my Transcription Project.

This is the Project where I am transcribing the Documents and Records held in the library of the Grenada Registers of Records. There are 33 microfilms of this Collection held at Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City. It is my work in transcribing the Records that may have some reference to the surname Smith. It is my effort to locate and chance upon any clue that may lead to the genealogy and possible reference to the origins of my great-great-great-grandfather James Smith.

I will tell you now that it is a tedious, and at times, a mind-numbing exercise. I am focusing on the available Records, Documents and Indentures from the period of time from 1764, the earliest set of Documents on Record, through to about 1850, which is about eight years after ggg-grandfather James’ passing.

The work is somewhat a bit arduous. I first have to review a microfilm and find those records that may have a reference to the name Smith. Some of the Registers have Indexes; some don’t. The listings in the Indexes typically reference the First and the Second Parties. The Indexes do not refer to or indicate whether there may be more than two Parties. There is no short-cut. I still have to review each Record page by page, by page.

Once I find a Smith-related Record on the microfilm reader, my next step is to capture an image of each page of that Record. I always save each page image to a single JPG file. These are labeled, if I remember to, in a way that includes the year, the microfilm number, the Item number, and the page number, plus any quick reference that may assist me in my searching through my lists of files. The image is then saved to a stick/Flash drive and then transferred to my PC.

And now I am ready to work on a specific Record in my search for that hint or clue to ggg-grandfather James’ genealogy. I then take each individual image and page file and I cut out the extraneous parts that were captured when I took an image of the Page.

Next I attempt to clean up the image. The software tools allow me to lighten, or darken each page… and eliminate some page, that is, ink bleeding, and extraneous markings that may exist on the over 200 year old Documents. This assists me in making the Page ready for transcribing the Record… I attempt to make it more legible.

The next stage is to transcribe and document the Record. I do this using my eyes to read and fingers on my keyboard. At times I use voice dictation software, but this can be sometimes a pain, as the recognition software may not recognize old script characters or construction of words and phrases as they were done so many years ago.

My next job is to journalize my work to A Genealogy Hunt. This is the progress and presentation of my work.

It took me a while to find where I had last left off in my Transcription Project. I was working on the Grenada Registers of Records from the FHL microfilm [1563378]. This work can be found at Part 535s. It appears that this work is only three Pages of about 75 Pages of a specific Record.

And now to get my fingers and mind going again… and continue the search for the genealogy and origins of ggg-grandfather James.

Enjoy,

Jim