I was writing someone today about what I dislike about microfilms and thought it would perhaps be appropriate for the list. Like, I want all the young and innocent ones to be corrupted too, you who DO NOT KNOW as yet what microfilms will do to your mind. Away! begone! do not attempt this, only the old, jaded, and decadent,...and perhaps the truly desperate, should deal with microfilms. Ashley quotation from letter: > Spicic Bukovica, you've looked on the maps of course, is close to Virovitica. > Have you tried microfilms? The Brazilian cousin has used them for that town > extensively, so they must be readable. If one has patience.... > I hate microfilms, have no patience, and find them difficult to read with > even someone who reads Croatian there with me. > If you do attempt this, go to a workshop on deciphering German Gothic > script. I'm a painter and calligrapher and I thought I knew how to read that > stuff. WRONG. The cousin named Schaeffer in the USA spelt his name SAFER in > Europe. If I'd been reading a register, instead of a transcription here in > Milwaukee, I'd never have spotted it. In the Gothic script, he wrote his name > something like LOFER. Seriously, that area of Croatia near Virovitica had > lots of Germans and many of the records are written in Gothic script. I > cannot think you will have any success unless you can handle the script. An h > might look like an f, a C like an L. You need to know what to expect and to > know, too, that other people have managed. Go to a workshop, one from your > local library or genealogy society, or find a regional conference near you. > As I indicated above, Milwaukee being German and Polish at the turn of the > 1900's, when the WPA transcribed records in the 30's, someone knew how to read > this junky handwriting and spelt the name correctly on the transcription, or > I'd never have managed to find that part of the family's history. If I'd been > looking at the original record or even a ship manifest or the original > signature as an index, I'd have passed right over it as I would have read > LOFER, which wasn't his name. > >