Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Progress

I literally only have a half page left to re-type of the family history out of 267 pages. The OCR program worked pretty well. I'd be cruising right along, just dealing with the fact that it couldn't tell the difference between commas and periods, and the letter "i" and "l" , or "K" and "X", or "a" and "e" and "c", then it would go all Ron Paul on me, and I'd get a page of this.
I scanned the original document in case anyone needs to reference possible transcription errors (unpossible!), or formatting. The updated version is in Word so it's searchable. And much easier to read. And up-dateable. (Don't get me started on the biography of John Hart that's currently in there. A little hyperbole is good for history, right??) It's by no means perfect, but at now it's readable. And the next update will include an index just to help with the clarity. I swear, each generation had at least one John, Joseph, George and William and it gets difficult to figure out who's who when three generations are alive and living in the same town at any given time.

A test for you. According to my family history, am I descended from (it's multiple choice - it's easy!):
A. Anne Boleyn.
B. A man (Richard Stought) who saved the life of the Duke of York.
C. An illegitimate son of one of the the Kings of Norway.
D. A signer of the Magna Carta.
E. A signer of the Declaration of Independence.
F. All of the above.

Tomorrow I am going ice skating with Sweet Daughter's Daisy Scout troop. I haven't been skating in well over 20 years. Once upon a time, I could do very basic cross-over turns and I could skate backwards. But I never learned how to stop unless it involved running into the boards or the violent application of gravity. This could get interesting.


(And the answer to the test was "F" of course! I cringed through several parts of this whole thing yelling "Primary resources! I want to see primary resources!!")

3 comments:

  1. Strap a big ol' pillow to your keister, like in the cartoons.

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  2. You are reminding me of Mighty Ducks 2 (I think it was) with the Asian kid who could skate like the dickens but couldn't stop.

    Gosh, I loved those movies growing up [goes to see if they are on Netflix]

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  3. We've got something in common.

    My ancestor (Thomas Stone) signed the Declaration of Independence as a representative of Maryland.

    His Father was the Proprietary Governor of the colony of Maryland, and his brother, John, was later elected Governor of the State of Maryland.

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