Many years ago, I discovered a 257 page manuscript written by my great-great grandfather, Charles Henry Poole, was located in the archives at the New England Historic Genealogical Library (NEHGS). Over four years ago, armed with an iPad, I was given permission to take photos of the manuscript. Previously, I had copied a few pages, but at .25 a page, it would have been too expensive and taken too long to copy the entire manuscript. The iPad photos took me about 4 days, and many more days to crop them.
During the time I was copying pages, The NEHGS published a book, "Manuscripts at the New England Historic Genealogical Society." With over 1,000 pages, it's a useful resource because you can quickly see if there is a manuscript you might be interested in. The first time I saw this book was in the local library, so you might be able to find one near you, by going to the WorldCat.org seen HERE for all locations.
As shown below are the original cover and brief description of GENEALOGICAL RECORDS of the POOLE FAMILY And particularly the descendants of JOHN POOLE of READING In the STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.
The original cover is quite fragile, as evidenced by my photo. The typed pages were in pretty good condition, except some were faded. My problem was due to my photography skills. At least ten had to be retaken because they weren't sharp enough. Looking back, I wished I had inserted plain white paper between each page, so I wouldn't have to see print from the following page. Copies of the cover and first page are below.
I was very fortunate to connect with a wonderful man whose wife is a Poole descendant. Over the years, he has been typing this manuscript and putting in links for each page. It has been time-consuming but Barry is a trooper. He did me a huge favor, because I knew I would never be able to type it (because of my poor eyes). The first 25 pages of the manuscript are HERE.
