| Tip #1 - Photocopying
documents
I had a lot of early 19th century letters photocopied during an
archive visit abroad only to find, 3,500 miles later back at home, that a
combination of thin paper, dense ink and the practice of 'cross writing' *
meant that the resultant photocopies had almost six pages of writing
superimposed. Since then we always take an A4 or 8.5" x 11" sheet of
black paper (ask your local photo shop - it comes from boxes of photo paper)
with us when visiting archives.
Place the (thin) problem document to be copied on the glass in
the normal way, and place the black paper ABOVE the document being copied, then
if the photocopier light/dark control is lightened a couple of stops none of
the text from the reverse of the paper will show through. As a stopgap, if you
haven't a sheet of black paper with you, make a blank photocopy with the copier
open and nothing on the glass. Not as dense as photo black paper but better
than nothing. [JL-J]
* Cross writing - an explanation: When
paper was scarce and delivery expensive, letters were sometimes written,
firstly in the normal way, on the first page, paper turned over, second page
written, then the paper was turned through ninety degrees, and pages three and
four written over one and two. Then, the paper was turned through forty-five
degrees and then pages five and six written over the previous four pages. A
variation of this was when subsequent pages were written between the lines of
earlier pages. Certainly makes transcription a challenge - to see an example
click here.
[JL-J]
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| Tip #2 - Photographing
tombstones
I recently photographed an ancestor's tombstone for e-mailing to
other family researchers. I made a point of deliberately photographing the
stone from the angle which included a large memorial (the most prominent
memorial in the graveyard). This will enable other researchers, if they take a
print with them, to line up the photo and easily find the smaller tombstone.
This tip can be helpful if, as these were, all the inscriptions are lichen
covered. In larger cemeteries you can usually take two pics from divergent
angles, which allows easy triangulation - especially useful if you've spent
hours locating a weathered stone amongst hundreds and want to find it again.
Row counting may not be the easiest way, especially not if in the intervening
years more stones have been added, or as sadly happens, vandalised - thus
leaving what could be critical gaps in the numbering sequence. [JL-J]
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