I am the typist from Texas that David mentions, and I want to encourage some of you to help David. We Madison County researchers are so lucky to have Jonathan Smith to do the hard work of research and publishing and then be generous enough to allow us to transcribe it on to the Internet, and to have David Donahue who weaves the magic to get the material on the Internet - to say nothing of all the work he does with transcribing material himself and surveying untold number of cemeteries. I have a scanner and find it easy to scan typed material and edit it. I'm not a good typist so that helps! I do it in my spare time and find it very rewarding, knowing that I am helping others like myself who cannot run to the Jackson - Madison County Library Tennessee Room when we need to. And there, again we are fortunate to have the very helpful and knowledgeable Jack Wood. There is a copious amount of material about Madison County online but it can be enhanced by a few more volunteers. Just email David and he will get you started. Betty Finley ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Donahue" <ddonahue@netease.net> To: <TNMADISO-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2004 12:26 PM Subject: [TNMADISO] madison county marriage records > Any of the marriage records available on microfilm can be transcribed by > anyone who wants to take on the work. If you live in Jackson you could > spend a few hours a week at a microfilm reader and transcribe . If you > live elsewhere, you can order a reel from the Tennessee State Library > and Archives and work at a reader elsewhere. It would help to own a > microfilm reader. > > An easier undertaking would to complete the retranscription of the loose > marriage bonds. The loose marriage bonds were transcribed by the WPA > project in the 1930s and a bound volume is available at the Tennessee > Room at the Jackson-Madison County Library. You could xerox pages and > take them home to type. Some of the loose marriage bonds were > retranscribed for Family Findings. The genealogical society was unable > to sustain the effort to retranscribe the loose marriage bonds and only > about 40 percent ever appeared in Family Findings. The remainder of the > book is waiting. It is not scanable. > > There is a wealth on Jonathan Smith materials about Madison County still > to be done. I only found two volunteers willing to work with his > materials -- one living in Maryland and the other in Texas. > > David > > > > > ==== TNMADISO Mailing List ==== > If you wish to unsubscribe from the Madison Co., TN list, send only the word > UNSUBSCRIBE to TNMADISO-l-request@rootsweb.com or if you are on the Digest List > to TNMADISO-d-request@rootsweb.com > > ============================== > Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration > Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more. > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237 > >

Betty sort of volunteered me to coordinate a marriage records project but I do not want to do it and I will not do it. I placed Madison Co. up for adoption so I could withdraw -- I felt over committed. Madison Co. sort of sucked me in. When I took it over I had three of Jonathan Smith cemetery books and the Goodspeed history on another web site. I thought naively I could do the Madison Co. genweb page simply by scanning two or three of Jonathan's books each year -- far more than three previous CCs had done. But I did more of his books than 2-3 per year and I started doing cemeteries because that is what I do. I did almost nothing with my older Decatur, Henderson, and Perry pages while I was CC of Madison Co. TNGenWeb. If someone is going to coordinate something like a marriage records project, particularly if it involves xeroxing materials in the Tennessee Room and mailing them out, it needs to be someone who lives in Madison County. If Ridgecrest Cemetery is every to get online, someone who lives in Madison County will have to do it. I am not about to do a cemetery in another new county, so if Bethel Cemetery on the Gibson side of the Madison-Gibson county line is to get online, someone who lives nearby will have to do it. It would have been nice if someone who lived in Madison Co. had adopted the genweb page but no one did. It has never had a local CC. Meanwhile, there are my other web pages. I have never checked the Perry Co cemeteries. In the un-August weather two weeks ago I began doing so as part of the five-year update of cemeteries I recorded in 1999. There are Decatur Co. cemeteries I updated in early 2001 but did not check until late 2001 and early 2002. The later checked updates were lost in a server crash and I have yet to redo the checking for about six cemeteries. I have various photographs I scanned in 2001 and never got online. I remember photos of Natchez Trace park area families, a reunion for a rural one-room elementary school in Decatur Co., and Amis family photographs; I cannot remember some of the other stuff. They are burned to a CD I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. The Hinson/Upper Coon Creek Cemetery on the north side of highway 412 near the Lewis County line is the eastern-most cemetery in Perry Co. It is probably 90 miles from there to Providence Cemetery in western Madison Co. near the Haywood Co. line. I have been to if not actually recorded most active cemeteries in between. It is too much. Four counties is at least one too many. This email may sound bitter. I am tired tonight. I actually checked and updated Leeper Cemetery in Lobelville today (6:15 am-9:15 am, 5:15 pm-6:45 pm) and the shady DePriest Cemetery just south of Lobelville (3:30 pm-5:00 pm). The temperature wasn't bad, the no-see-ems were. I will keep working on Jonathan Smith's material. I have Henderson and Madison items I have never finished and some I have yet to start. Betty copied several items when she was in Jackson last month. Jonathan mails stuff to Laurel directly. Now that I am not CC of Madison Co., I do not want to copy his stuff and mail it to people. Anyone who lives in Madison Co. can get it themselves. I did not get to Jackson last week but I am having lunch with my cousin tomorrow. I will check the split for Oak Grove Methodist Cemetery in the afternoon as I said I would. David

http://www.tngenweb.org/records/madison/cemeteries/oakgrove.htm After looking at the cemetery again, I moved the Hinton, Merriweather, and Moss markers from the Whitlow Family Cemetery to the church cemetery. David