Bests of the Week at NARA (the Archives)

The best name of the week was William Waymam.  Say it out loud a couple of times.  Reminds me of the children's book about Wadney Wabbit.

The best document of the week is below.  Anything with red, especially from that era is special.

 

Best number of document images captured in a week is 7104.  It beat last week's number of images by one image (7103).  We were doing about 5000-6000 at the start so are getting better.

Let's play ball!

Our ward had a baseball activity a few Saturday's ago.  Most everyone played, even the little ones.

 

 

We had a couple of birthdays to celebrate, then time to cook hotdogs!  (I'm in there with a green shirt on.)

 

What we do All week

Monday through Friday during the day we go to the National Archives to photograph land records from  early 1900's Nebraska.  All of the records we camera capture are from cancelled or relinquished homestead entries.  When we come into the research room a cart is waiting for us with boxes of records.

 There are several file folders in each box; one for each homesteader.  Here are the calibration tools we use before photographing each paper in the file.

 When a box is complete we go back and evaluate the images and look for photos of fingers or shadows.  We reshoot any that are not good.  One box can contain between 500 and 1100 images.

A Night with the Royals

It was Mormon night a couple of weeks ago at the Royals baseball game and we got some cheap tickets to go.  I even found a blue shirt to wear!  Almost everywhere we go people wear Royals gear.  (Might have something to do with a World Series.)  Still, it's not as   good looking as Mariners clothes.

 

Records from the Archives

I've taken a few snapshots of some of the documents we are capturing.  Here is part of a letter from the wife of a homesteader who faced relenquishment.  (He got very sick.) Here is some very beautiful handwriting. And an envelope sent to a homesteader and returned to the land office. 

Steamboat Arabia Museum

The steamboat Arabia sank in the Missouri River in 1856 with 200 tons of goods onboard.  The river changed course and the boat was rediscovered 45 feet under a corn field in 1988.  We toured the museum with several other senior missionaries a few Saturday's ago.  It was fascinating! Here are some of the goods recovered.