Note Boundary Changes
Recently, I found it necessary to change the genealogy program that I had been using. The instructions said to always record birth, marriage, and death places exactly as they appear on the original record. My database displays a message whenever the date does not match the date of creation for the place specified. However, it may sometimes be necessary to add notes to explain where to find these places.
 
For example:

• Daniel Shipman was born about 1747 in Bladen County, North Carolina.
• 1750: part of Bladen County became Anson County
• 1762: part of Anson County became Mecklenburg County
• 1769: part of Mecklenburg County became Tryon County
• 1779: part of Tryon County became present day Rutherford County

Most websites I’ve seen state that he was born in Rutherford County. Some of his siblings were born in Anson County; although, the family does not seem to have moved. All of this can be quite confusing without explanatory notes.
 
James L. McConaughy

Photos Get Identified at Reunions
I am just back from a seventeen-day trip that included three reunions, an uncle’s retirement party, and two cemetery meetings. To prepare I dug through my mom’s albums and stacks of old reunion photos going back to the ‘50s and mounted them, three to a page on archival cardstock, and placed each page in a plastic sleeve. Six three-ring-binders were filled. At the reunions I placed these on a table and with slips of paper names were written down and taped to the sleeve so attendees could help identify people in the photographs.

Each evening I copied the names to the pages and took the albums back. This in turn helped people remember the names of others in the photo. I also visited with aunts, uncles, and cousins after the reunion and uncovered a lot of information.

An uncle who had been a teacher for fifty years has a yearbook for each year that he taught–a real goldmine that will take many visits to go through.

My genealogy database helped me to add names to some photos that were identified as “Virginia’s husband” or “Mandy and her children.”

These albums had the effect of getting other people bring photos or albums along. My HP Photosmart printer that also acts as a stand alone copy machine was a valuable tool allowing me to make copies of many photos that I otherwise would not have been able to get. This is much faster than scanning and saving an image, and the photo was available immediately for others to look at. Plus I was not tied up typing and could continue visiting.

This was a popular activity and I will be doing it each year. I also took selected photos to two cemetery meetings with some success and a lot of comments on how it was wonderful to see who was there.

Bill Lewis

Digitizing Slides
I read the article about taking photos of slides. I used the open lid of my flatbed scanner as the screen, so the projected photo was actually very small. My brother and I digitized 6,600 of my parents’ slides. We copied the notations on the slides. (My mom was good at documenting the subject matter.)

The name of each file was the year and slide number in the tray. We made a spreadsheet with the file name, and included a column for names, and a column for location. Recently, we used the database to search for and select 500 photos of my cousins and their families to put into a slide show for a family reunion. It was a hit!

We used a computer and projector to display the digital photos at a size the group could easily view. Using the year and slide number automatically put the slides in chronological order, and we watched our generation grow up from infants to adults.
 
Susan Hintz

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