Category: Research

Transcribing digital images

Thanks to Alex over at winging it, I’ve discovered some free software to help with transcribing text from the digitised images of records that we’re all using now

It’s called Transcript and displays the digitised image in the top half of the screen and an RTF text editor in the bottom half so it’s far easier to transcribe. You can even set it up to scroll down the image automatically every time you hit the “Enter” key or as the text wraps at the end of each line.

Guess what I’ve been doing today!

Sheena
www.setait.co.uk

Meet the ancestors!


Meet George Calder who was born in Wick, Caithness in 1842.  He emigrated to the USA in 1870, when he was 28, and married and had a family there.

At the age of 80, he decided to return to Scotland to visit his family.  He sailed from New York to arrive in Plymouth on 6 July 1923.  Presumably he travelled up to Scotland from there as he sailed from Glasgow almost 8 weeks later to return to New York.
George was my first cousin, three times removed.  Does it make more sense if I say he was my grandfather’s first cousin, once removed?
This isn’t a family photo.  I discovered it when I found his 1923 US passport application on www.ancestry.com
Now meet his daughter Helen
She was born in Hartford, Connecticut in the USA in 1877.
She applied for her passport in 1919.
In addition to the photo, we also get a physical description.
She was 5 feet 10 3/4 inches tall, with grey-blue eyes, brown-grey hair and a light complexion.  Her face was long-oval with a straight nose, round chin and a medium mouth.
She was a missionary worker and was planning to travel to China, Japan, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] and India to inspect missions.
Isn’t the internet wonderful!
Sheena