Friday 7th August 2009 – Big Dusty Books and Old Writing

They have pretty serious storms here in the Mid-West. One back in Missouri took the power out for several hours. We had a fairly noisy night last night, but no apparent damage.

The nice Californian genealogical ladies (when I use that adjective about ladies I'm always worried I've spelled it wrong) were worried at breakfast about getting back to the library. Their racial stereotyping lobes told them that I had an umbrella concealed about my person, which, of course, was true. I told them loftily that my Stetson had been rolled for me by an expert in Montana, so as to protect me from the rain. But I took my umbrella anyway.

They wee a bit miffed to discover I was going to the Courthouse. There is a particular joy in finding that somebody kept a record of things a hundred-and-eighty years ago, and wrote it all down; in great big dusty leather-bound books; in copperplate.

It turned out I was looking for the second book in the series: and it wasn't where it was supposed to be. We eventually spotted it standing in a corner. It was the wrong size, and too big for the shelves.

I think these records were copied out laboriously for people who wanted their deeds entered into the court record. There don't seem to be as many as you would expect. And they seem to have a lot of errors in them.

But the thing that really surprises me is that the writing is so bad. There is the odd spot, here and there, that looks just like an old Bank of England fiver, but mostly it is very difficult to decrypt. Sometimes, I think, they didn't really understand what they were copying (or the original was also badly written), and the words aren't quite right.

Anyway, having found the book I wanted, all I then had to do was turn to the page the index said, and there, copied out one-hundred-and-sixty-nine years ago, was the plat map of Glasgow, IA:

[6296]

"from", as it says, "Thomas Miller and Ephraim Glasgow and Co".

Mind you, little more that a year later, in November 1841, Miller seemed to sell nearly the whole place, and, not long after that (I forgot to write the date down!), Glasgow, by this time in Dearborn County, way over on the Ohio/Kentucky edge of Indiana, is selling a piece to Miller.

So this place got called "Glasgow" sort-of 'en-passant', as though it hardly mattered what it was called.

Later that night, I went out to listen to the band. The local band is called the Jefferson County Green Band, and they were playing in the Red Rock Saloon. It followed in my mind, therefore, that they must be a blues band. But they weren't.

A young lady who seemed to be a groupie told me it was 'classic rock'. I told her that the early set seemed to me to be more 'tobacco-road-meets-bob-marley' but she wasn't impressed. What do I know, anyway.

I had to go outside to hear them clearly. My ears simply refuse to work at that volume. Then they seemed quite good. (A bit like the bagpipes, really.) Then the police came by, to enact a little play on the main square with a young man who had been flaunting a sports car at them, and the bar owner made me go back inside with my beer. So I had to go home