Two pieces of (free) software than can do that are Genscriber and Transcript. See which one you prefer as you turn those images of baptismal records from the Old Parish Register into a searchable file.
Although many family historians long for sofware that begins with a low quality image of a torn, faded, badly-written and poorly-spelled old document and spits out a perfect copy of the text it contains (without any effort on their part); most of us will be happy with something that makes it easier to juggle the tasks involved in opening an image and scolling around it on screen while you type what you are reading into a worddocument or table.
Two pieces of (free) software than can do that are Genscriber and Transcript. See which one you prefer as you turn those images of baptismal records from the Old Parish Register into a searchable file.
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Helen Smith gave a very informative and entertaining presentation on how we can use the information contained on Death Certificates to enhance our family history. She did begin with some important cautions about how we read the certificates because "the person who knew some of this information is dead"; so be prepared for some uncertainty about name and age of the deceased. Remember also that the place of death and occupation are not necessarily the same as usual place of residence and life-long career. If possible use a census to check.
But all the fun lies in how the cause of death has been recorded, misrecorded and mangled over the years. Helen recommended Archaic Medical Terms for a terrific list of causes of death in many languages. Note that exactly the same information is available at Antiquus Morbus for those who prefer the Latin (whatever Helen thinks about us!) An even more extensive collection of web links can be found on Cyndi's lists for diseases and death. If you were intrigued by the references to the London Bills of Mortality that Helen mentioned, you can see images here or read more at Family Search. For an insight into the (slowly) evolving medical understanding of illness and death, you can have a look at the archives of the British Medical Journal back to 1840; and for the patient's perspective turn to newspapers in Trove or the British newspaper archive. Update: Helen has posted to her blog From Helen V Smith's Keyboard a list of causes of death than include many she mentioned in her talk to us. Les Tobin gave a comprehensive coverage of the Medals awarded to Australian military personnel from before Federation to the current day. He covered the distinctive features of medal construction, protocols for wearing them and much more. The sites that he recommened we use have been linked through our Decorations page on this site. A very interesting snippet was that there were 5798 Mentioned in Despatches emblems awarded to the 1st AIF even though this ancent British award was not officially part of the Australian army system until 1920. (Awards were made after hostilities ended.) He also explained the significance of a Bar on a medal to indicate that the wearer had been awarded that decoration twice (although these should not be confused with clasps that name particular battles in which a soldier served. We learned of William Walter Boswell whose Military Medal had two bars. But most valuable was learning about the two classes of awards for officers and other ranks and when it is appropriate to admire a soldier's rack! Les concluded by recommending the book Australians Awarded : A Concise Guide to Military and Civilian Decorations and Awards by Clive Johnson for further study. |
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