Spring and More Milestones

This has been a very nice month.  I just wish it could have lasted longer.  I waited and waited all through February and March for April to get here to enjoy some spring, and like a flash, April is almost over!  We still only have an occasional warm day, but I'll take the 50's and 60's.  I just have to remind myself that it won't be long before we will be looking for shade while we wait for the shuttle.

One of my favorite things about being here is being with the missionaries!

Elders Bevan and Elder Philogene came over one evening to get some help on family history.  So we fed them some dinner and Jerrol gave them a good lesson.  Elder Bevan is from Raymond, Alberta, Canada.  His family is all about rodeos and fishing since they live near Calgary and Banff.  He will be going home about the same time we are.  

Elder Philogene has only been out in the field for about a month.  He is from Haiti.  He was living in Port-au-Prince and as he walked to work each day, he noticed the young men in 'uniforms' (white shirts and ties) on the street.  So finally one day he stopped and talked to them.  He was baptized 20 days later.  He is the only one in  his family who is a member so far.  He lived in Boston for the last year, working and taking on-line classes so he can start school at the end of his mission.  He speaks 4 languages.   He is just amazing!  His testimony is so strong!  He is going to be an awesome missionary!  Both of these elders will be going to BYU, so we will be seeing them later I'm sure. 

Elder Syme, Elder Bevan and Elder Philogene

Elder Bevan is really excited to do his family history when he gets home.

Sister Jolley and Sister Guzman brought Brother Mynder over the other night so we could help him get started on his family search project.  He was baptized just a couple of weeks ago.  He is an audiologist and very knowledgeable about a lot of things, and is so much fun to talk to!  He has studied many religions throughout his life from Catholicism to Buddhism.  He finally found the one church that answered all his questions and he has a firm testimony.  He has a lot of family information so he just needs to learn how to use the family history program.  He is excited already to go do baptisms for the dead at the D.C. Temple.

Sister Jolley, Brother Mynder, and Sister Guzman

We reached another milestone this month.
On April 14th at 3:40 pm we scanned our 1,000th book!

Hershey Friendshaft, Seventh Annual Reunion of the Hershey Family, 1912.

There are a lot of names in this little book.


We scanned our 150,000th image on Monday, April 20th at 12:25 pm!
It is in the book The American Family of Rev. Obadiah Holmes, 1915. . .

right there on the left . . .

. . . page 138.

We scan books of all sizes, but this is the smallest so far.  It would almost fit in a recipe box.  But it had 265 pages!  Little books are harder to work with on the scanner. I prefer big books that are not too thick.  Or too old.

In the book Grant Family Reunions, 1899-1931 we came across a challenge to scan.

It  is a wonderfully done composite picture of the Unveiling of the Memorial to General Grant.

It was taken in 1922.

We scanned it in three sections.

Also there was this nice picture of Ulysses S. Grant.

We are always on the lookout for familiar names. We see the Fisk name fairly often.  So Rachel's family may want to take note of this family crest we found in 

The Descendants of James Huston, 1967.

Scanning can get tedious sometimes, so we look for things that are interesting.  

And we do find them.

This is the first picture we have seen of an actual Knight.  It is from Thomas Hord, Gentleman, 1903.

Jerrol was taking a break and wandering through the large meeting room on our floor.  There are some bookshelves along the wall with some random books.  He found these little jewels.

They were printed in 1908 and have some wonderful illustrations.  I know some in our family who are  huge fans of Jane Austin, so we scanned the pictures, 20 in all.  They are available to anyone who wants copies.  I know of at least two or three who will.  (Smiley face)

Sometimes we take the time to read a little of the books.  This is one account we read that made us appreciate so much the sacrifices that the early settlers made to come here.  This is taken from a book about the Hester family.  I am impressed with the strength of these people in the face of such hardship and cruelty. 

I just had to take a picture of her.  I like her.

In the Genealogy of the Huffman Family, 1899 is this picture of the fiance of Washington Irving. 

I took this picture for no particular reason except I liked the name.

After hours of turning pages it is nice to break for lunch on the third floor.  It is always cool up there, so I have to take a sweater, even in the summer.  The third floor is where the computer servers are so they keep it cool, but the lunch area is a little warmer than the rest of the the floor.  They have a room with a fridge and microwave and another room with a table.  That's our blue lunch cooler behind the napkins that we bring our lunch in everyday (except when we go to the nearby Mexican restaurant or Pandoras for a cheesesteak).
We are well taken care of. 

One final thought for the month:

The Lord is blessing us every day.  You are all in our prayers.

Love  you all and HAPPY SPRING!  

Marched Into Spring-Finally

It has been a good month.  We enjoy the wonderful people we get to know.  We are grateful for being able to do a work that will benefit many people.  I have learned a great lesson:  When you have a desire to give, to somehow repay the Lord for all He has given you, He has a way of blessing you so much more.  The more you try to give, the more He gives in return. 

King Benjamin was right.

Earlier in the month we said goodbye to another precious missionary:  Sister Manson (on the left) went home to Mesa, Arizona. Sister Jolley is on the right.  The Sisters have such enthusiasm and love.  The Elders do too.  What a privilege to associate with them!  

We love the Carrs!  Brother Carr is the Philadelphia Temple Project Manager.  He and Sister Carr have been to our home a couple of times so Jerrol can help her with her family history.  They are two of my favorite people!  You can see she is delightful!

While Jerrol and Sister Carr were on one computer and I was doing dishes, Brother Carr was on the other computer checking out a book on the Carr family that Jerrol found for him on familysearch.  Then I got to visit with Bro. Carr for a while.  I learn a lot from him. What an amazing couple and we are so blessed to have them as friends.

Brother Mike Galatola is a member who lives in the senior living center across the street.  He is 82 years old.  We give him a ride to church each week.  He is a brilliant man who actually translated the book of Revelation from Greek, "The Apocalypse, The Revelation of the Apostle John, rendered in verse.  He gave me a copy a couple of weeks ago.  It is something I will always treasure.  

He is a very poetic man.  It makes me sad that such a great mind is now trapped in his mild dementia.  He is also a little hard of hearing, so conversations are a challenge.  I wish I could have known him when he was younger. 
This is a picture of him from our blog at Christmas time:

I think spring has finally arrived.  It has taken long enough! Unlike some of you out west, we have been a little on the colder side until this past week.  We didn't get much snow, so it doesn't look cold, but on this day it was in the 20's. . . in March!

I finally went to work with just a sweater on Friday!  No more looking like this everyday.  

It's the end of the month, so it's time for a little recap of our progress.  This is our March totals:
Books:  150

Images:  23,558

Our totals to date since we have been here are:

Books: 916

Images:  135,869

We have always had two computers, but one of them was on wireless.  It was very slow so we didn't use it very much.  But we finally got another table and a direct hook-up to the internet.  Now I have my own work station!

I do all the auditing of the books.   Auditing is a review of each book that we scan page by page to make sure there are no missing pages and the quality is ok.  When you have to wait 5 to 10 seconds for each page to load (as it was on the slow computer before) it becomes very time consuming, especially for a 500 page book. It was very inconvenient if we only used the one computer because one of us was just waiting around while the other worked.  Now with this other computer working better, I can move right along while Jerrol is working.  This computer still isn't as fast as the other one, but it works pretty well.  For the 800+ page books, I like to use the other one though.

We are impressed by the amount of information there is in some of the books, page after page of names and dates.  It isn't often you get the amount stated up front.  In The Giles Memorial, 1869, it states in the introduction  that "in this book are over 11,000 names and between 15,000 and 20,000 dates"!  It had 606 pages and the index started on page 557.  It will be a gold mine for someone.

St. Patrick's Day was interesting.  I didn't give it much thought during the day, but about an hour before time to go home, I realized that we had scanned 7 books of families names Green or Greene!  Of all the days we could have scanned those books, we did them that day!  We didn't plan it.

I finally found a book with my family in it!  We scanned a book that had some Antrims in it.  They are mentioned in the book History of the Guise-Dole and Related Families (Northwestern Ohio Antrim-Antrum), 1972.  Mary, the daughter of John Antrim, married into this family.  John is the brother of James.  These brothers came to New Jersey in the late 1600's.  My family comes from James.

If you look at the bottom of the page  you can see a list of John's family.

We scanned our 2nd longest book this month: 1194 pages!  It is The House of Hamilton, 1933.  (The top three books have 1334, 1194,and 1179.)

We scanned our second oldest book this month: Biography of the First Settlement of the Family of the Name of Goodhue, 1833.  It was in an envelope because it had no cover. It only had 18 pages and was bound by a string that was still sewn to the edge.  Compared to some old books we have done, the pages were in pretty good shape.  

This is another old book with string binding.  It is interesting to see how it is literally sewn together.

I get very nervous doing some books that are old and fragile.  This one was a real challenge.  Like others which have broken covers, it is tied together with a lace.

When you take off the lace:

It is one of the reasons we are here, to get them on line before they are too fragile.

It almost makes me cry when I work with books like this.  I'm always relieved when I can put them back.  

Sometimes you can tell that a book has never been opened and read.  This book, The Frazier and West Families, 1910,  had three pages that had to be cut apart. 

Sometimes we get to scan books with famous people.
We scanned The Grant Family History, 1898, that had Ulysses S. Grant in it.

And here is a little book about Benjamin Franklin.

Another prominent person’s book we scanned was Betsy Ross: The Griscom Legacy.  We read a few paragraphs and it was very interesting.  Her real name was Elizabeth Griscom.  That is a book I will have to read once it gets online. 

We found this picture of Thomas Jefferson. . .

. . . and Martha Washington.



Sometimes while we are scanning we find some fascinating stories.
Here is one from the Gray family.

We scanned a book called Garard, Emery and Allied Families (1947) with a sad tale.  Reverend John Corbly ‘s wife and 4 children were killed by Indians in Ohio on May 10, 1782.  His wife’s name was Elizabeth Tyler.  There were 2 daughters, 1 son, and an infant with no gender given.  Life was precarious then.   

And this is a strange little picture:

After stories like those, you have to look for something to brighten the day.

I like this little lady.

Wouldn't you love to spend an afternoon with these two?

When I first saw this picture, at first glance I thought her left arm was a giant robot arm!  Thanks to my son and grandsons for their gaming influence on me!

There are a lot of blessings that come in doing family history.  And there is a lot of interest throughout the world right now. It isn't just in the Church.  I was impressed that this interest was noted by a very famous person.

We all have our special place in this epic of the family.  I have come to appreciate more the 'episodes' of my ancestors, their examples, their sacrifices, their lessons I can learn from them.  I am also appreciating more the importance of my current family.  My love for my children, my grandchildren, my siblings and their families has deepened.  
Each one is special and priceless. 
It is all about the family.
The Lord really does have a wonderful plan!