This has been a pretty humbling week for us. We had been moving and grooving on our capture of documents but since we started working on our Hillsborough project our production seemed to come to a screeching halt! Up to the end of Rockingham county we were photographing about 550 pictures each hour and a half and now we are barely making 350. That has been painful for both of us but towards the end of this week we were accomplishing a little more each day. Hopefully we will adjust to the different documents a little faster and move them through. Since these records actually started in the late 1700s we find ourselves being careful to not do any more damage than is already done. It has been fun to see the bequeaths made in pounds instead of dollars and the handwriting is very challenging but quite beautiful. We were blessed to have both our Elders and Sisters come to the archives and prep the documents with us. So appreciate them providing this service for us because we couldn't open the probate files fast enough to stay ahead of ourselves. If you saw the blog you may have noticed that we have now opened 20,000 probate files since we began this project which was a wonderful milestone as well. We love what we are doing. I heard a commercial on the television from Ancestry.com announcing that they now have probate files for people trying to search their families now available for viewing from every state in the U.S. I think we may have been a part of that great announcement!
On Friday after work we drove up to Lebanon, New Hampshire to attend a fireside. Apparently the descendants of Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith have a foundation and they worked on a project to honor Doctor Nathan Smith who operated on Joseph Smith, Jr when he was just 7 years old. He had a condition called osteomyelitis which resulted from typhoid fever that he and many others had during the 1813s. Dr. Smith (no relation) had developed a procedure to deal with this while he was working at Dartmouth College. Because of his procedure hundreds of children escaped having their limbs amputated which had been the course of action previous to his effort. As a result of the foundations project they were able to donate $25,000 to the Dartmouth School of Medicine. The formal ceremony had taken place at Dartmouth College earlier in the day but they had a fireside in the evening for others to come and hear from members of the foundation. One of the speakers was a many great grandson of Joseph Smith, Jr. He was raised in the Reorganized LDS church but about a year and a half ago he and his wife became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The fireside was so interesting and we both enjoyed the experience a lot.
On Saturday we just stayed home and worked on some laundry, cleaning, shopping, and various projects in preparation for Bill and Bev coming to visit next weekend. We are counting the minutes until they get here! It sounded like our family has been pretty busy as well with birthdays, ball games, weddings, moving, and marching. Keep up the good work. Have a great week!
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