This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: waroper Surnames: Roper Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.roper/1939/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Over the years, I have accumulated quite a few notes from my research of the ROPER family, especially in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Many of these notes or hand written or spread across a number of digital files in various formats. Sometimes, these notes take the form of photocopies of either primary records or secondary compilations, with or without notes interlineated in the margins. When I first set out to investigate the ROPER family, my note taking was far less formal and thorough. Later, I found that I had sometimes failed to do a good job of recording the precise original source from which the notes were taken or that I had failed to note sources I had consulted. In my later investigations, I became somewhat more organized and thorough. Beginning about 2010, I embarked upon a new procedure as to copies of things with somewhat mixed results. Instead of making photocopies of pages from secondary sources, I instead used my Nikon camera to take digital images. This allowed me to make far more copies at more nominal cost, but also created a bit of an organizational and post-processing nightmare that I hadn't fully anticipated or budgetted the time to resolve. The photographs rather than photocopies were of somewhat uneven quality, due to variations in lighting and steadiness of my hand. The best of these were far better than the photocopies. The worst were far worse than the photocopies and sometimes unreadable. This created some additional unevenness in data collection and recordkeeping since one could usually instantly see when a photocopy had come out badly, but this was often less apparent with a photograph. My camera was taking fairly high resolution .jpg images. But these images, as individual photos, are far less easy to work with than a compilation of notes in an Adobe Acrobat document. Thus, post processing of the images required conversion from .jpg to Adobe Acrobat format, lacing the individual photos back into a single comprehensive file with an appropriate and intuitive file name and running of optical character recognition (OCR) software to make each document text searchable. Generally, in respect of any secondary source consulted that seemed to be an intuitive and relevant place to look for ROPER records, I looked in the Index for at least ROPER, RAPER and ROSSER records (because records are sometimes mistranscribed). I also looked for select other surnames which were seemingly relevant to the place and time period covered by the secondary source. I took great care to photograph the cover, title page and relevant index pages as well as those few pages in each volume which seemed to relate to the most relevant records I found. I also endeavored to take images of Preface and Introductory material which explained and gave context to the abstracted material, something that I had previously done much more sparingly in previous decades when I was paying $0.10, $0.25 or $0.50 per page for photocopies. This thoroughness also meant that I was obtaining FAR MORE pages than previously with photocopies and this vastly increased the amount of time necessary for post-processing of my notes into a more coherent, convenient and usable form. I spent several weeks at the Virginia State Library, the North Carolina State Library and the Maryland Archives in late summer and early Autumn 2010. I consulted hundreds of secondary sources and have thousands of images. Unfortunately, soon after this genealogical excursion I found myself too busy to do the necessary post-processing follow up with my new digital archive of ROPER family information. While I endeavored to push some of the more significant findings directly online to this Message Board, in many instances I was working quickly simply obtaining and digitally archiving what I had found without a great deal of analysis. There were several topics that were the focus of my investigation and I spent the greatest amount of time studying the records which were relevant to these inquiries, but in respect of records which probably related to other branches of the family, I very often simply made digital photographic COPIES intending to return to the material more deliberately later. Overall, what I found in respect of my new approach to notetaking and recordkeeping was that I never seemed to catch up in terms of post-processing and transcription. The digital copies are thus mostly in an incomplete state of post-processing, making the material difficult to reference and use by me and impossible to use, understand and appreciate by anyone else. The burden of post-processing is made somewhat heavier by my preference to study, analyze and understand the raw data as I am posting it, giving the data better context. This thread is intended as a collection point for the posting and discussion of some of my notes relating to the ROPER families resident in Brunswick, Virginia, mostly before 1800. In the interests of pushing more raw content out faster, I will be somewhat lighter with analysis as to what this data may MEAN. * I want to add an additional caution as to the limits of my effort, as well as appropriate follow through by those with a keen interest in the Brunswick ROPER families. It is important to understand that these ROPER are NOT MY BRANCH of the family and despite a reasonably thorough consultation of the SECONDARY SOURCES for Brunswick, Virginia, Brunswick was NOT a focus of my research. Therefore, while I took notes of ABSTRACTS of underlying records, I DID NOT CONSULT THE UNDERLYING PRIMARY RECORDS. SOMEONE WITH A KEEN INTEREST IN THIS FAMILY NEEDS TO OBTAIN, TRANSCRIBE AND POST THE RECORDS DESCRIBED WITHIN THE ABSTRACTS. The good news for other researchers is that I have made this VERY EASY FOR YOU. You will find in respect of my later notes that I have been very thorough in identifying the source and showing sufficient information to follow up and obtain the records cited. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board. <br>