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Thursday, January 20, 2011

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS. GOOD NEWS

I recently ordered the complete Civil War Pension file of my 2x great
grandfather Asa Freeman Ellingwood.and it arrived last week-all 106
pages of it. Needless to say, I was psyched. That's the good news.

And the bad news?



Much of it looks like this.There's about a half dozen interviws of Asa, his
wife Florilla Dunham Ellingwodd, their son Walter and various other people
all written in handwriting that is difficult to read. I plan to scan each page and
share them with my siblings, my Aunt and cousins and my Ellingwood relatives.
Part of that process includes transcribing the interviews but as you can see that
might take longer than I'd like.

And the good news again is that I love working on this stuff!

                                             Asa F Ellingwood & Florilla Dunham Ellingwood

7 comments:

Kathy Reed said...

I'm assuming you got the $75 version? I've been reluctant to pay that much as I have six civil War ancestors -- but the $25 version isn't as extensive. In addition, if you get the smaller record and then want the larger one, you pay the full $75. Decisions, decisions. At least it sounds like you got what you paid for. Enjoy transcribing!

Karen Packard Rhodes said...

Well, Bill, you have your work cut out for you! That handwriting is minimalist! I'm a paleographer, and that would give me hearburn. But enjoy -- once you get into it and start getting those nuggets of information, you will be hooked. I hope you bring up a lot of really prime ore out of that mine!

Donna said...

Bill, look on the bright side...at least it's in English. I thought reading German and Polish handwriting was bad...until I encountered records in Russian. It's a different alphabet so I feel like I am deciphering a code or something!

Dorene from Ohio said...

You have your work cut out for you...what a terrific situation for a researcher!

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Transcribing that will be a job! I have found with my own transcriptions that after awhile of the same handwriting it does get easier. Transcribing from scans may help too because you can enlarge the script.

Hope the file holds some gold for you.

Claudia said...

Reading all of those pages and transcribing it will keep you busy all this long cold winter....I still have to send for my husbands great grandfather's record. Guess I should get on it...

Anonymous said...

Wow, that *is* terrible writing. But enlarging the scans may make it somewhat easier.