There is something fascinating about winding your way through a roll of microfilm and finding a document written by an ancestor. But when that document was written around 1761, trying to actually read it can be problematic.

I’m faced with that dilemma now. I have two documents that I’ve made copies of from microfilm and now I need to “translate” each word, so to speak. Not all handwriting was copperplate perfect and then there are the words with a double s in the middle. They look like an s followed by an f.

It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that it proves that ancestor was in that particular place at that particular time – confirmation that what you thought might be true is true. Satisfaction!