Howard County Will Index Transcription Project Announcements
March 25, 2000
I've made some changes in the instructions page. (Wouldn't you know it? <grin>) Initially, I forgot to put the word "Roll" in the entries in the second column. (Sorry about that.) Also, Lynda Becker came up with a great way to flag the troublesome spots where we can't decipher the information. In an area where you can't determine what the information should be, place a ?. Then add a fourth column with two ** on the far right. See the last entry on my transcription example on the instructions page. If there are entire lines that you can not read, put a ? in each column and add the ** in a fourth column. This will make it very easy for me to spot the information that needs to be completed by the Howard County Genealogical and Historical Society.
I know these pages are much more difficult to read than the first page, just do the best you can with them. Thank you for your patience and hard work. If we keep chipping away, we'll get this project completed!
March 5, 2000
The first phase is now complete and loaded in the Howard County portion of the USGenWeb Archives! YEAH!!! Thank you so much for all of your hard work. I'll be contacting you soon with files for Part II.
January 22, 2000
The first phase of this transcription project is almost complete. I've assembled all of your transcriptions into one huge file and have sent messages to those of you that either haven't sent your transcriptions or that I may have lost when I my mail program when beserk. We'll start the second phase of our transcriptions - the handwritten ones - very soon. Thanks again to all of you for your hard work.
August 2, 1999
Because of some more inconsistencies that have been discovered with the dates, we are going to just drop them. There is no way to represent the dates in any consistent manner and be able to have a true alphabetized index when we are through. Believe me, I have thought of everything at this point. So, I will just add a table at the beginning of the alphabetized list giving the range of years that appear to be in each book number. It is imperative that you proofread your work and make sure that the book numbers are right. Otherwise, researchers will have a difficult time finding the will of their ancestors.
Thank you for your patience through this most frustrating time!
August 1, 1999
First of all, the project is going very well. Thus far, we have transcribed almost 1,400 entries in only 5 days! Good job everyone! I can't tell you how proud I am to be associated with such a great group of folks. I know that there are several of you waiting for more pages, but I would like to get draw your attention to something before we proceed.
I did some investigating Saturday as to what appears to be the gaps between the years. What I learned is that there are no missing records and that the years on the index only represent a sort of division point. For example, the year 1870 was typed in the index and then several entries are shown before the date 1877 appears. Those that fall between these years could have been for 1871, 1872, or 1873, etc. So, when I asked you to put the starting date for those entries that had no date at the top of the page, I shouldn't have. Sorry, I will go back and fix those that we have already transcribed and I can do so fairly easily.
How do we proceed from here?
Because of the way these wills were indexed. We need to start putting a
the range of dates in which these entries appeared. Use the year that starts
that series of entries in the index book followed by a dash and then the year
of the next series. (See the updated transcribing instructions on the sample.)
I will give you the year that starts the series you will be working on and the
year that ends the series that you are working on.
Don't worry about those transcriptions that you have completed and sent to me. I can easily make the changes on them. Sorry about this everyone.
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