"Mark"

Over the last several years, but more this year, I've been doing "indexing", which is looking at an old  record that was handwritten and typing it so it's easier to read.  Also, as the old images fade, they aren't lost. 

The last few months I've been averaging around 2000 records a month, half an hour or so each day.  The ones I'm doing now come in amounts of 5, but there are some that have had 10.  You can select the types you want to do.  The last census was actually fun; get me in a routine and stand back.  The ones I'm reviewing right now are WWI draft registration cards from Pennsylvania, people born towards the end of the 1800's.  Because of the time period, the names are all male.

(I had to give up on the death records because it made me too sad, infant mortality being so high.) 

While typing the draft cards, I think of what their lives must have been like back then: clerks, teamsters, machinists, a doctor, so very very many listed as miners.  In Oxford History, a book written by Oxford residents, Orthea Moser and Dee Boyce, there is an account of a miner family that was so tragic I still can barely think about it.  We may think times are hard now, but we don't have any idea how rough it was back then. 

I think of the mud in the streets, the women washing clothes on washboards or rocks, field work, open coal fires, no communication with loved ones far away, working with dangerous chemicals.  It helps keep me appreciative of my blessings.

On the sort of humorous side, I kept noticing that on the signature lines, there was often an up arrow, fitting "Mark" in between first and last names.  Who knows how many records I've messed up adding the middle name of Mark when it actually just meant someone was writing the name for the person who couldn't sign his name but was placing his "mark" on the line.