Our giant scanning week was a fantastic success; we managed to digitise over 3,000 documents! Once we have indexed and transcribed them they will be added to our website so you can trace your ancestors and add detail to your family tree.
We hired the SMA Versascan 3650 A0 flatbed scanner from Genus to scan in our largest deeds. We had to move out of our office for the week as the scanner was too big to get through our front door let alone into our office.
Within an hour of delivery we were up and running. The scanning software was very easy to use and we could scan our documents quickly whilst still taking good care of them. The majority of our large deeds are made from velum so they are fairly thick and strong; we are always fascinated how a 300 year old deed looks as good as new. However after decades, maybe even centuries, of being folded up it was very hard to scan the deeds in without resting them first. We therefore rested the deeds for a day or two using paperweights so the creases would not be as prominent when looking at them onscreen.
The week was also a success in other ways. We discovered our earliest document dating from the 1550s as well as more documents from the 1600s. We also came across some familiar names such as Samuel Jackson…expect to see these popping up on our Twitter page at some point in the near future.
We are about half way through digitising our large format deeds, so we will be hiring the scanner next spring to finish scanning them in. Perhaps in spring we’ll find a document from the 15th Century!
P.S. Don’t forget we are adding more names to our database every month, so if you cannot find information about your ancestors or where your ancestor’s lived, do try again a few weeks later.