Glogowatz Church
1770-1835
Main Index
Using
the Included Excel Spreadsheets
Required Software ‘Plug-in’
for Your Web Browser
General Information
This is the second and final phase of the
Glogowatz Church Record project. All of
the known Glogowatz Church Records (Baptisms, Marriages, and Death Registers )
from 1770-1897 have now been digitized on CD-ROM.
The first phase of this project started about a
year ago in July 2001, with efforts to obtain the Glogowatz Church Records for
the period of 1836-1897. Through the
efforts and financing from many people in the
The second phase was born out of the success of
the first phase when the idea of digitizing the earlier years just seemed like
the natural thing to do. Jake Dumelle
had graciously volunteered the loan of the microfilm and several Glogowatz
researchers who had not had the opportunity to contribute to the first phase
provided the needed funds. In February
2002, the film was turned over to the same company that converted the first
microfilms to CDs images.
After several weeks however, it became clear
that this microfilm would be difficult to transfer because of the way it was
put together. The automated equipment
continued to fail to properly convert the 1400+ images. Many hours were spent adjusting the
conversion software to no avail. Many
images were still split between frames and the equipment skipped some
frames.
From April through mid July 2002 I made a
thorough review of each image to index them by month and year as well as rotate
them to the correct orientation. I also
had to determine which images were missing or split so I could rescan them. I was able to utilize a microfilm scanner at
the University, but then I had to make two scans for each image, one scan of
the top portion of the frame and one for the bottom portion of the frame. I then had to assemble the two halves
together to get a complete image. The
University film scanner was only able to give me 300 dots per inch (DPI) as
opposed to 400 DPI for the automated scanner.
You can tell the difference if you look closely at an image with an
‘a’ suffix vs. one without the ‘a’ suffix. As of this release there are 1,501 images on
this CD.
Anyone who is interested is viewing the actual
microfilm that is digitized on this CD can find it or order it for viewing at a
nearby
Some interesting observations about this data
set:
The microfilmed records span a 66-year period
even though all of the images fit on a single CD.
The later years (1836-1897) were distributed in
the first phase on 3 CDs and take up 62 years inclusive, thus at least 128
years of the
Other interesting observations can be seen in
the Death Indexes.
For the year 1785 there are 30 pages of entries, almost all of them in the 2nd part of the year, with 7 pages in September alone. While this may have been due to an epidemic it must have had a lasting impact on those who survived.
There were some better years like 1800 and 1802
when only two pages of entries were recorded for each year. I’m sure there will be other
interesting discoveries after we have time to analyze these village records.
Last minute notes: After creating a test CD I checked every
image again for accuracy and found about 60 mistakes. I made all of the corrections, which ranged
from the wrong month (most common mistake confusing October and November) to
out of sequence or duplicate images. I
removed the duplicate images from the indexes so you will see some blank or
open entries table entries on some of the indexes - this is normal – I
did not want to take time to move every image entry in the table up or down to
fill the spaces. Only one link was
missing, but that was corrected when I fixed a spelling error. (It must be the
German in me to keep striving for perfection, but I don’t want to delay
any further so if you find an error, send me an email or post it on the Banat
List so others can me made aware of it.)
Using the Included Excel Spreadsheets:
Viewing these images for long periods of time can be a strain on your eyes and patience. Here are some ideas on helping you do your research.
I recommend printing out the include Excel spreadsheets for each section and using them to take notes or make notes about your findings. The printed sheets will help you keep track of what you have done. To bring up the Excel worksheets (if you have Excel or Office installed on your computer) click on this link: Excel Spreadsheet with Microfilm Indexes
To keep your notes in the spreadsheets themselves you must copy the spreadsheet from the CD to your hard disk – put it in a folder that you can easily get to, then click right on the file name, you should see a popup menu – select ‘Properties’ then ‘remove the check mark from the ‘Read Only’ box and click ‘OK’. This will allow you to edit and make changes to the file on your hard disk.
Tips on Viewing the Images
General:
This CD is designed to automatically start up the Main Index (Index.htm) if you have the ’AutoPlay’ feature of your computer turned on.
If it does not start up automatically after you close the CD tray, or you want to restart it, click on the “My Computer” icon and locate the CD ROM Drive that has the CD in it. Note the Title on the CD is “GlogowatzP1” for Glogowatz Part 1. (Don’t confuse it with Phase 1, which covers the years from 1836-1897)
Next: Click-right on the CD and a Windows shortcut menu should appear. Select the ‘Explore’ option if you want to look at the files on the CD, or select ‘AutoPlay’ or ‘Open’ to start up the CD and load the main index.
Using existing indexes to search for
data:
One way to make your research easier is to use the indexes created by Erwin Kilzheimer that are posted on the Village of Glogowatz Home Page. (See link at the bottom of this page)
I would recommend printing those indexes and using
them to locate the entries on the images.
Erwin identifies the years and page numbers for the entries. Note that there may be more than one number
at the top of an image that looks like a page number. In some cases the document page number is
also hard to read. With some patience
you can locate the entries even when the page number is hard to determine.
Time Line: The index is arranged by year and month. This layout is basically a time-line with a hyper-link to the image of that page.
The year and month listed are a reference for the first entry on that page. The page may contain multiple months and even span to the next year.
As you are trying to locate a particular time frame always go to the year and month before the one you are looking for. For example if I wanted to locate a marriage that happened on Aug 18, 1778, don’t select 1778 Aug, instead select the preceding month like July and if that was not listed I would go to June, etc. The reason for this is that August entries may be on a page that starts in the month before and continues through the August date.
Abbreviations:
Something that may look odd as you begin researching these images is the abbreviations for dates. Months like, September, October, November and December in particular need some explanation. There are times when alternate entries switch between the full spelling and an abbreviation. In some case both are given, but many times there are only abbreviations.
I have listed a few entries below to give you an idea of how to interpret these abbreviations:
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Sample date entries
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Here is an example of two entries
from image P1R1-0199b under Marriages – the top entry is |
Handwriting Variations and Page Headers:
Many pages can be difficult to read and decipher, but you will also come across images with easy to read entries and some with interesting stylized writing.
It might be good to keep a Latin dictionary close by to help you understand some of the text on a few scattered pages. The titles and text above each column will be made available later on the CD support web page – see below for the link to that website.
Anyone who wants to volunteer to translate page headers please forward them to me for posting, I will include your name and email for credit unless you want to remain anonymous. I did not have time to do those translations.
Bad images:
Many of the bad images that were rescanned are also on this CD. They are included only for completeness and for the curious researcher.
You can find them under a subfolder in the ‘Images’ directory under the respective document type. The subfolder is entitled ‘\Bad’ – see the image below for the location.
Required Software
‘Plug-In’ for Your Web Browser
Viewing these images with your web-browser
requires some additional software. The
true size of each image is about 10 inches across by 14 inches in height. If you print them on regular 8-1/2 x 11 inch
paper the text will be readable but it will be very small.
The
The Easy Way:
Most of you are already to go if you received the first set of CD’s, but
some of you need to get familiar with and Install the ‘Alternatiff’
plug-in found at: http://www.alternatiff.com/
Then you can use the HTML indexes which are selectable at the top of this page
- to access the images. More information
on this plug-in can be found under the ‘Utilities\TIFF Viewers’
folder on this CD. The plug-in
installation programs are also located on this CD, but check the website for
the latest edition – There is one for the Microsoft Internet Explorer and
one for Netscape. Once you install it
you have to register it on the Internet, which is a one-time process and its
also free. See the image structure
below:
Tips
to Speed Up Viewing
If you want to speed up the display of these images and you have about 450 megabytes of free disk space then you can copy the contents of this CD to your hard drive.
I recommend creating a separate folder on you computer.
Copy all the data on the CD except for the ‘Utilities’ folder, the “PTStart.exe’ and ‘Autorun.inf” files, these are only needed to install the ‘Alternatiff’ plug-in and start or auto-play the CD on startup.
Keep the same folder and sub-folder structure as it is laid out on the CD (see image above) – Click or Double-Click on “Index.htm” or “Index” file to start it.
Acknowledgements
My personal thanks to those who have been patiently waiting and have made this endeavor a success, especially Jake Dumelle, David Dreyer, Erwin Kilzheimer and the many Glogowatz Researchers who answered the call to support this effort.
Enjoy…
Pete Schmidt
Knoxville, TN
July 2002
Email: [email protected]
Internet Links:
The Village of Glogowatz
Home Page
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~banatdata/Glogowatz/HomePage.htm
The CD support web page is located at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~banatdata/TIFF/Home.htm