DGS Newsletter, Volume 27, Number 4, May 2003 Page: 212
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GENERAL DGS NEWS
fiery gleam in her eyes. Then in the next room she
saw drawers and drawers full of microfilm. The
look on her face scared me.
It was here that the man explained the Soundex
System. (My wife said she already knew all that,
but she let him go on so I could learn it.) The
Soundex is something else. First you have to pick
a letter and then some numbers, something about
M or N, S and C, and you're not allowed to use
verbs! I'm glad she took all the Soundex research.
The Mississippi state budget must be in worse
shape than Texas'. They furnish pencils, but you
should see them! On each study table, there's a
little box with short, stubby, blunt pencils. My
advice to you is look around. Sometimes you see a
long pencil. If it's unattended, get it. If you want
your pencil sharpened, you have to give it to a staff
person, and they take it back somewhere to
another room and sharpen it for you. (Between you
and me, I can think of a lot of ways they could
improve efficiency here.)
Besides all the books, files, and microfilm in the two
rooms we could work in, they have all these files
and microfilm back in the safe or somewhere. To
get something there, you have to look in a special
notebook and get a title and a number. Then you
fill out a blue form (or yellow or green - if you don't
use the right color, they don't have to get it for you,
but the nice man who was helping us would
anyway). You need all the stuff about the file or
microfilm, your researcher number, who your great-
grandmothers were (not really, I made that up), and
I forget what else. It must be filled out properly.
Then you put it in the right box. Then you wait until
the staff person gets several and goes back to find
the stuff, and you wait some more. I noticed that
my wife didn't wait. She would go and start looking
at something else.
She had given me an assignment. She picked out
three books and made me a list of the names to
look for in the books. I found some of the last
names, but the first names weren't what she
wanted. However, she patted me on the head and
told me I had done good and that I should write
down the names with the page number, book title,
author, publisher, and copyright date-just in case
she wanted them later!Since the right names weren't in the first three
books, I thought the folks must have died, so I
looked in several cemetery books in various
random counties for the names I was researching.
Some of the counties were in Mississippi and some
were in Alabama, and I have no idea what part of
either of the states these books focused on. I
found a lot of names but-you guessed it-they
had the wrong first names. I didn't bother to copy
the page number et al. Just let her look them up
herself if she wants the documentation.
After I finished that, I guess I really had done well
because she gave me a question for the staff
member to help me find the answer to. You know,
like "find Zadock McVay in the 1870 census." They
had a book, but he wasn't in it -- probably in jail in
another state.
It's amazing how much stuff I had looked at and
found nothing. I finally went to other book shelves-
it was a really big room. I started selecting books
by the condition of their binding. The ones well
worn probably didn't have my names. Someone
else would have found them already, so I
specialized in the books that had a good back, they
were more likely to have my undiscovered names.
Why do people like to do this?
Meanwhile my wife was bouncing off the ceiling.
She'd found the Confederate Army records for her
Littleton ancestor and made copies for everybody.
(Oh, yes, you can take money in. Quarters are
best.)
She had allotted three hours for research, and then
we had to get on the road. Guess what! She wasn't
ready to leave at three hours. "Let me look at just
this one other reel," she begged. How could I
refuse? We'd all be happier if she looked at just
one more.
Our visit to the archives on the return trip was much
like this one although she didn't get as excited as
she did over the Confederate records. This time
we already had our researcher cards. I just waved
mine under the guard's nose and signed in. I've
still got it. I show it around at work. After all, I'm
licensed to do research in the Mississippi State
Archives for the next five years!Dallas Genealo - ical Socie / Ma 2003 / Volume 27/ Number 4 212
M- -Ma
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Dallas Genealogical Society. DGS Newsletter, Volume 27, Number 4, May 2003, periodical, May 2003; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1261331/m1/18/: accessed July 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Genealogical Society.