My friends - There are several items that I need to pass along to you in this posting. Our friend Bill Jennings contributed the piece below on a flood in Marshall County: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Paducah Daily News, 1878. The Flood in Marshall County. "We are indebted to Mr. Charley Gilbert, who reached the city to-day from Benton, for the following account of damages by the flood in Marshall county: The rain commenced on Saturday night and continued alternately until Sunday night, when it came down in torrents. Clark's river rose rapidly and reached a higher stage tan was ever known before. On the middle fork the loss to farmers will aggregate $10,000. Mr. John Smith, who lives in that section, lost over 7.000 bundles of wheat; four plows which were left in the field were swept away, and his corn, tobacco and fences were ruined and washed away. Josiah Woods who lives in the same neighborhood, suffered fully $1,000 damage. Everybody in that section was more or less damaged. Mr. Ap Smith and his family are missing. The water got into their house and is supposed they deserted it and were drowned; at least they have not been heard of since. The losses to farmers in the way of stock, crops, fencing, &c., can hardly be estimated. On Monday morning Mr. Wm. Irvin, who lives the other side of Wadesboro, started to this place in a buggy. When he reached Wade creek he drove in without observing particularly that the water was deep and the current swift. The result was that the fine mule he was driving was drowned and he had much difficulty in extricating himself from his perilous dilemma. At Benton, as Judge Robertson was not present, Mr. R.W. Wake, of Eddyville, was elected pro tem Judge, opened court, and proceeded with a $5,000 breach of promise suit, in which Mr. Hollie and -------- were the parties. No mail was received at Benton from Saturday until this morning, as all the bridges were gone and the creeks were swimming." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also, some of you may already have seen this announcement, but for those who have not, the Family History Library has introduced a new format on their page, found here: www.familysearch.org Further, the following was announced recently about the plans which the organization has developed about the hundreds of thousands of documents and microfilm reels housed in their huge vault in the side of a mountain: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Deseret Morning News, Friday, September 09, 2005 LDS to put microfilm in vaults on Internet Huge effort planned to index family history data By <http://deseretnews.com/dn/staff/card/1,1228,103,00.html>Carrie A. Moore Deseret Morning News 9 Sept 2005 Ever wonder what's inside those secured vaults, owned by the LDS Church, positioned high inside the granite walls of Little Cottonwood Canyon? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working toward allowing anyone with Internet access to learn more than they've ever known before about the information contained on 2 million-plus rolls of microfilm housed there. Currently, the church is compiling searchable indexes to that information and will eventually make it available for free through an automated database on the Internet. The church excavated the vaults containing those records on property it purchased in the 1960s, providing a safe repository during the height of the Cold War for birth, marriage, death and census information it considers essential for the salvation of mankind after death. Now church leaders seek to make the information more readily available to the world. "The goal is to create (Internet-accessible) indexes to all the films we have in the vault. That's a long-term process and that's a lot of films," according to Paul Nauta, manager of public affairs for church's <http://FamilySearch.org>FamilySearch.org Web site. "We've not announced when people will begin to start seeing" the indexes. Those attending the annual Federation of Genealogical Societies' conference this week at the Salt Palace will get a "sneak preview" of the church's plans. As the project progresses over time, indexes to records from 110 nations previously stored on microfilm will become accessible to virtually anyone, anywhere, through the Internet via the touch of a few keystrokes. "We're showing people how we'll be creating indexes from those films. Sometime in the future we'll ask people to help us create the indexes and make them publicly available, and little by little we'll start to index the films from the vault like we did with the 1880 (U.S.) Census. "The challenge now is it takes a lot of people and a lot of time" to create such an index. "Currently, you have to look at images on paper or burn them on a CD and distribute those to index the data. We're moving the whole process to the Internet and this is a prototype of what that might look like. . . . That's what the biggest buzz is at the conference." Conference attendees are using a lab at the Salt Palace equipped with a number of computers to demonstrate the new automated database. The microfilm information includes birth, marriage, death and census records. New advances in indexing software utilities and applications mean the LDS Church "now has the ability to produce lots of indexes faster," than it did with previous databases it has digitized, including the 1880 U.S. Census. Making that database available online was a 12-year project, using tens of thousands of volunteers. In the future, the new technology "will provide automated indexing" for an ever-increasing number of microfilms "so people can readily search it from their homes." As the number of family history researchers continues to grow ­ one study showed 40 percent of Americans have done research on their family history and another said 90 percent have expressed interest ­ demand for online indexes that simplify searching for ancestors has soared, he said. How much time will it take to digitize all the films in the vault? "Let's put it this way, it will depend on how much volunteer help we get," Nauta said. "I think we can digitize the films to be indexed to stay up with demand, but much will depend on how many volunteers we can generate worldwide to index their records of interest. If, in a couple of years, we could get a million indexers worldwide, we could put a big dent" in the massive undertaking. The indexing demonstration and other planned improvements to the popular <http://FamilySearch.org>FamilySearch.org Web site are drawing standing-room-only crowds at the convention. The changes "will make great strides to simplify and increase the success of the family history experience," he said. Just when the first indexed information from the microfilms will become available online has not yet been announced. "We don't want to be swamped with people before we're ready to handle it," Nauta said. The new developments won't make more than 5,000 small family history centers housed in LDS chapels worldwide obsolete. Previously, those looking for information contained on the microfilms stored in the church's Granite Mountain Records Vault had to request that copies of information on the films be sent to their local center. At some point in the future, that likely won't be necessary any longer, he said, but "that will continue to be a role for a long time. "Family history centers will continue to be a mainstay" for accessing information on the microfilms for some time to come. As more of those records become digitized and indexes become available, the role of the local centers, he said, "will probably change. Some people have no Internet access, and they'll use them for that. The role of the family history centers will evolve over time to help people get started" with their research because "many people don't know how to do that. They will become more fundamental to help people get and stay organized, and to answer questions they have doing their research." Many of those in town to attend the conference are also making use of the church's renowned Family History Library, less than a block from the Salt Palace. Hours have been extended to accommodate guests, with the library open from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. through Saturday. "It's an exciting time for family history," Nauta said. "Those just developing this kind of research as a hobby will never have any appreciation for how far this industry has evolved, even in the past 10 years." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will continue to keep the List updated about the New Orleans records recovery as it proceeds. -B ==========================================================================