February Genealogy Meeting

The Crittenden County Genealogy Society meet Sat. Feb. 12.  Once again the group braved the cold and spotty snow covered areas to come to the meeting.

Standing: Anna Rae Porter, Fay Carol Crider, Steve Eskew, Rita Travis, Dot Kunnecke, Connie Gould.

Seated: Doyle Polk and Betty Croft.  (Yours truly made the picture)

This month's progarm was "Reading Old Handwriting."   Reading the old handwriting is always a challenge, even for the most experienced genealogist.  So many of the letters of the alphabet resembled each other as the old scribes wrote the old documents.  Many times when you read an original document and get the person's name, which a lot of times was only initials, and then find out later, you had misread the initials and the name would be incorrect.  Especially on the middle initials.  

We had some sample copies of original documents from our Court House, which included, marriage license and county court records, and the group was able to see if they could read what it said, and decipher the letters.   Some members told of their experiences with first learning to read the old handwriting and how they got some of the lettering confused.  We had a good time and a good meeting.

Our next meeting will be March 12th and the program will be the importance of using a family group sheet.