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Here is the Excel file with some Vital Records for Pittsfield.
I say "some" because this is only part of the pages
I copied from two films from the LDS collection. This
set comes from FHL Film No 1902437. It has entries
that run from 1747 (delayed birth record, since Pittsfield
was not formed until the 1760s) to 1798.
As I explained in my previous message
to you, the material on this film is actually a TRANSCRIPTION
of the original town records. This was done in the
late 1800s (not sure of the date), but having seen originals
from other towns of this period, I'm sure it was intended to
clean them up and make them readable. Anyway, this set comes
from Volume I of the town records (with some from Vol II
thrown in later in the listing). Each transcription
page was line numbered, 1 to 50. I have retained that
numbering here, as you'll see in a minute.
There are two worksheets in this
Excel file. One, labeled "Page Sort," is
a direct, line for line transcription of the pages covered, including
blank lines. The other, labeled "Date Sort," is
the same material resorted by date given in the Town Records
(TR), to place all these events in time order.
The page number of the Town Record transcription
is noted in column "Copy Page." The line
on that page (1-50) is noted on column "Copy Line."
For most entries, the page number from the ORIGINAL town record
is also noted in column "TR Page." This stopped
appearing in the final few pages of this set, so that column
becomes empty.
The events documented here cover three
types: (1) births contemporary to the entry in the original TR,
(2) births occurring years prior to the entry in the TR (these
tend to be clumped together in the transcription, and I assume
in the original TR, as if the parents wanted to document
the birth dates of their children after the fact), and (3)
intentions of marriage. Some deaths are recorded here, but usually
only as a notation for a birth event when the child died soon after
birth.
The type of event for each entry is noted
in the column labeled EVENT. Each event typically
has two names associated with it (columns NAME 1 and NAME
2). For births, NAME 1 is the child's name, and NAME
2 is the parents' names. For marriage events, NAME 1 is
the groom and NAME 2 is the bride. When the TR had
an additional comment for the entry, it is placed in the
column labeled "Notes in TR." When I have
a side comment for an entry, I have placed it in the column
labeled "My Note."
In most cases, the wording of the marriage
intentions was "John Smith and Anne Jones intend marriage."
However, on later pages this changed to "Marriage is
intended between John Smith and Anne Jones." In
order to maintain the column format here, I simply put the "Marriage
is intended..." phrase in the Event column AFTER the names, even
though it appeared before them in the original.
By convention, the TR shows the home
towns for brides and grooms. When this is the same
for both, the wording was "John Smith and Anne Jones,
both of Pittsfield..." If they were from different
towns it would appear as "John Smith of Pittsfield
and Anne Jones of Lenox." In order to fit better
with the name columns in this worksheet, I adopted a policy
of breaking up the town names using the second version, so
even if the town name was common to both it was recorded here
as if they were different. That is, "John Smith of
Pittsfield and Anne Jones of Pittsfield.." would be
used.
I have tried to place each event on its
own line in this worksheet, in order to provide some integrity
to the entries. This is a slight modification from
the original, since entries like marriage intentions frequently
flowed over two lines as the recorder filled out the common
phrase, such as "John Smith of Pittsfield and Anne Jones
of Lenox intend marriage together." Keeping this all
on one line in a compact form seemed to be a better approach
for sorting than trying to do an exact line-by-line transcription.
In such cases, the line immediately after the first line
of the entry is marked as EMPTY LINE. Note that are
some multi-line entries that were better kept in the original
format over several lines. When I did this, I assigned
the same date to each line so that they would sort properly
by date.
For 98% of these entries, a date is given
for each recorded event. I have noted the date across
four columns in the worksheet, since Excel date number formats
do not work for dates prior to 1904. These columns
give the month number 1-12 (my insertion due to the variation
in month spellings), month by name (recorded here as shown in
the transcription, since the name spellings do not follow
current conventions), day of the month, and year. For
some of the entries on
the final few pages, the date is not given completely. That
is, it may be only a year with no month or date, or only
a month and year. I have tried to figure out what the
recorder meant, and have inserted
my interpretations of this in the date columns. When I did
this, I noted as such in the "My Note" comment
column.
The final column of the worksheet is
a combined "date" value used for sorting purposes.
It combines the numeric values for year, month and day to
create an eight digit value that allows easy sorting.
I have retained name spellings are as
given in the transcription. When an obvious misspelling
appears (by our standards anyway) I have marked it [sic].
When the name was not very legible, I would mark it with
1 or 2 question marks -- (?) or (??) depending on how badly it was
blurred in the film.
Sorry for all the explanations and caveats,
but I felt it was important to explain what is in here.
I assume you will reformat this material to suit your web
page design. I could have made it even messier by separating
the names and towns into separate columns, but that would
have been overkill...
Mike Phelps
Goodyear, AZ
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