All Surname Variants don't fit in Surname Field
I'm working the US, New York, Statewide—Index to Land Records, Grantees, 1630–1975 [Part C][M35J-MRC], and I've run into a situation where there are too many variants of the surname to fit in the field; there are 18 variations of McGinnis listed, but I get through half of the 10th variation and run out of space. What is the way forward on this one?
Answers
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The short answer is, for each record (Grantor-Grantee pair), you need to make an extra identical entry and continue the list on that entry, and so on. From my reckoning, two entries (with 9 and then 8 alternate surnames) would suffice for each Grantor-Grantee pair. I realize that’s easier said than done. It looks like you’ll have at least two entries for each line item in the ledger, and often multiples of that. I’m trying to think strategically of the least onerous way (for/to you) to accomplish this that won’t be too confusing to the Reviewer.
Note particularly the 5th from the right (“Ditto/duplicate the previous entry”) in the Horizontal toolbar, and the 7th from the right ("Ditto/duplicate the previous field).
The image below (I hope) is the first ledger entry, and the way I think it should be indexed. I hope there are no typos. There are several ways I can think of to get to this result and use it to help index further ones. About 80% of the ledger has this set of surnames for the Grantee. Here is one somewhat efficient strategy for dealing with this. I can think of many variations on this and maybe you'll think of better ones. Good luck.
(1) Complete the first entry, except for the Grantee Surnames.
(2) Move to the second entry and use the 5th tool from the right to ditto/duplicate the first entry - all fields Now Entries 1 and 2 are complete and identical except for the Grantee Surnames.
(3) In Entry #1 complete the first 9 Grantee alternative Surnames. Open a Word or Wordpad or Notepad document and copy/paste that complete Surname Field to that document - to use later. In Entry #2 complete the next 8 Grantee alternative Surnames. Copy/paste that whole field to the same document for later use.
(4) Move to Entry #3. Use the horizontal toolbar's 7th tool/icon from the right ("ditto field") on the last 5 fields (the deed date and the book/page). Index the Grantor.
Move to Entry #4 and use the 5th tool from the right ("ditto entry") to duplicate Entry #3.
(5) Move back to Entry #3, refer to your Word document, and copy/paste the set of the first 9 alternate Grantee Surnames in its Grantee Surnames field.
Move to Entry #4, refer to your Word document, and copy/paste the next 8 alternate Grantee Surnames in the appropriate Grantee Surnames field.
Good luck, and again, I hope I don't have any major typos.
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Another alternative to using a Word-like document to store the two components of the Grantee Surnames is to use a "clipboard manager" program that essentially allows you to have multiple clipboards. So that you can copy each component once and then just choose, paste, choose, paste, etc.. One such that I use - thank you Rob Latour - Author of A Viewer for Windows) - is Ditto.
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