Sunday, June 20, 2010

What I'm Presently Working On

Just a quick update on what I'm working on with genealogy right now. A couple of years ago, I made photocopies of the last will and testament of my 6th great grandfather Frederick Guthard at the Register of Wills office in Reading, Pennsylvania. Last night, I finally got around to transcribing it - and wow, it's definitely fascinating to read the inventory of appraised items he left behind back in 1791 when he passed away. If you're curious to read the PDF file I created of the transcription, you can do so here: Last Will and Testament of Frederick Guthard. Within the next couple of days, I plan on posting some of my thoughts and analysis of what I found.

Also, one thing I like to do is volunteer for FreeBMD - an online project to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages, and deaths for England and Wales. Once a month, I transcribe an index page for the site. It takes a couple of hours to do, but I feel like it's worth my time. It was through FreeBMD that I found indexes to records of my own ancestors. From those indexes, you can order birth, marriage, or death records from the General Register Office. If you're interested in volunteering to transcribe the indexes - or if you're looking for your ancestors' records, you can do so by going to the FreeBMD website.

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