RLP 142: Researching at a State Archive – Interview with Sam Howes

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 142 Researching at a State Archive interview with Sam Howes. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (43s):
Let’s go, hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (50s):
Hi Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m doing great.

Diana (54s):
What have you been working on?

Nicole (56s):
Well I’ve been doing a deep dive into British newspapers. I’m writing my ProGen study group assignment for a family narrative, which is kind of like the kinship determination project that you do for certification. And I’m really happy for the practice. And I’m really enjoying the process of reviewing my old research. I had found all of these articles about our ancestor, Thomas Bradley in the British newspaper archive, and I had not saved the whole entire page of the newspaper. I just had saved the clipping back when I did this in 2014. So I’m going back and writing citations that include the page and the column number and found like 10 more articles.

Nicole (1m 38s):
It’s just fascinating how poor our ancestors were and all of the times that they ran in with the law and the police beat the things that happened. It just sounds like it was a difficult time to be a poor person in Swineshead, Lincolnshire, England in the mid 1800s.

Diana (1m 56s):
Oh, interesting. I remember when you first made those discoveries and that was so exciting. So I’m really glad you’re writing this all up now with citations and, you know, really documenting every fact. So that will be great to have that our family history.

Nicole (2m 16s):
Yes, me too. I’m excited.

Diana (2m 19s):
Well, today we are looking forward to our interview with Sam Howes, who is the Senior Archivist at the Maine State Archive. So welcome Sam.

Sam Howes (2m 29s):
Hello. Thanks for having me.

Diana (2m 31s):
To get started off. Why don’t we just learn a little bit about you? So can you tell us about your connection to Genealogy, where you live, what you do so we can get a little background on you?

Sam Howes (2m 42s):
Yeah, so I live in a little town called Jay, Maine. I have long standing, New England roots and some French Canadian as well. I’ve been doing genealogy since I was about 14 years old when my aunt showed me the family history of that, my predecessors has already sort of done and I’ve been working on it ever since. So it brought me into the archives. So that’s where I work now, and I do a lot of genealogy based research here.

Diana (3m 7s):
That’s great. I think that we hear that a lot with people and their beginnings and genealogy, that it was a relative, a parent, a grandparent. And that’s fun that that was your aunt. And I think that gives us all hope that we can influence the next generation and get someone else interested as well. So that’s neat. Well, I love that you’ve got those New England ancestors and French Canadian, so you’re in the right place, the right location to research right there in Maine.

Sam Howes (3m 36s):
Yep.

Nicole (3m 36s):
I have to ask with your French Canadian ancestry, have you found that there is pedigree collapse or endagomy in your family?

Sam Howes (3m 47s):
Oh yeah. Yep.

Nicole (3m 48s):
Right. You know, everybody that I’ve come across who has French Canadian ancestry has run into that issue, which is challenging when you’re doing DNA analysis. Right. But also can be a very interesting challenge to work through, I think. Well, can you tell us more about what you do at the archives there in Maine?

Sam Howes (4m 6s):
Yeah. So I work mostly with state government agencies to take in the archival records from those agencies that would come here. I oversee the research room, which is our public facing section, which is where people come in to do their research. And I work with our email and respond to remote requests that way. And obviously a big part of what I do is cataloging records. So we have to be able to tell people what we have, so that involves going through boxes and creating our finding aids.

Nicole (4m 34s):
And that is a wonderful service that you do for genealogists. And for anybody researching finding aids can be so useful. You know, when you’re trying to decide whether to hire a researcher to go and help you out or visit a collection. So how long have you been working at the archives?

Sam Howes (4m 50s):
I’ve been here for just over six years.

Nicole (4m 52s):
So when you started there, what was the state of the cataloging or are you just receiving new records all the time? Or what is, what is that like?

Sam Howes (5m 1s):
So we definitely had a very large backlog. We still do. So we opened in 1965, but the state had been in existence since 1820 when we separated from Massachusetts. So what sort of happened is all of those records just kind of came here at once, nearly 150 years of records just showing up at once. So on top of that, the records that come in every year from the current agencies, it meant there was not a lot of time to do cataloging, so we didn’t have much,

Nicole (5m 36s):
I can see that that would be a big backlog and that it would just take a lot of time to slowly work through that and get it all prepared.

Diana (5m 44s):
Yeah. How many people do you have working there at the archives? You are the senior archivist. So do you have a group of people that you work with?

Sam Howes (5m 50s):
Yeah, so we have, I want to say it’s 15 people. The number has been going back and forth and we have some person that we sort of share with the Maine state library and the Maine state museum. And they work a third of their time at each agency, which has also been a nice feature for us to sort of be able to know what the other institutions are doing. But yeah, like I said, I oversee the search room, but then we also have the records management division, which works with the agencies to create the records, retention schedules and determine whether records should be archival or not. And we also have the record center, which they work with the non-permanent state records, which are only accessible via the agency itself.

Diana (6m 29s):
So that’s gotta be a challenge deciding what to archive. Let’s just talk about the records that are there. I can only imagine that you’ve got to do some types of sifting what’s there. What do you look for? What could someone hope to find through the archives?

Sam Howes (6m 46s):
Yeah, so we definitely don’t take everything. Luckily, the way we work is each agency has a records officer who works with us and sort of knows their retention schedules. So they’re doing a lot of the sorting themselves within the agency. And then just speaking to us when they need to transfer boxes over. So that works out pretty well, but because we are the state archives, we primarily just have state agency records. There’s a few things that have come in as gifts over the years that are more manuscript collections, you know, private papers. But the vast majority of what we have is government records. So that includes, you know, the executive branch of government, the governor, and then we have the legislature and their records that they create.

Sam Howes (7m 29s):
And then we also have the judicial branch, which includes the county court records all except for one county, which is Lincoln county. They have a historic building, so they actually kept their historic records. But the other 15 counties in Maine, we have their court records.

Diana (7m 44s):
This points to the fact that as researchers, we have to figure out where the records are, someone might assume that everything was there and then find out that that one county kept their own. So when you started this archive or you didn’t start it, but when it began in 1965, I am guessing that these records went far back because Maine has been around for a long time. So what are some of the earliest records that are there?

Sam Howes (8m 7s):
So the earliest records we have really are those county court records, because we don’t really have anything for a state record from prior to 1820, because that would all be in Massachusetts. But those county records go back to as old as the county was. So for York county, which is most of Maine when it was formed, they go back to 1636. I want to say as the earliest record, which has a charter from the King of England at the time.

Diana (8m 33s):
So you’ve got some real treasures there. That’s for sure.

Sam Howes (8m 37s):
Yeah.

Diana (8m 37s):
Are those really early ones are those just on microfilm now? Or do you actually have the originals archived there?

Sam Howes (8m 43s):
Yeah, so we have the originals and they’re on microfilm as well. They’re actually available on FamilySearch as well though, sort of hidden, but they are digitized and accessible. If you know where to look,

Diana (8m 55s):
I would imagine you can find them on FamilySearch, just going through to the county and then court records. That’s how I usually find those types of things. .

Sam Howes (9m 4s):
Yep. Yep.

Diana (9m 4s):
Yeah. I know once, you know the trick. Yeah. The FamilySearch catalogs opens up so many things, which is why I teach about it a lot because it is this wonderful resource though. Well, I’m also a little fascinated with these records from the legislature and the governor. And I know a lot of people wonder if they can find their ancestor and those types of records. I have found ancestors in legislative petitions and I’m guessing that you have seen a lot of that as well.

Sam Howes (9m 33s):
I have, yes. So we have not only the legislative records from records, from bills that passed. We also have what we call a legislative graveyard, which is the bills that didn’t pass. So you can really see a lot of, sort of the community history, but also you can look at who’s signing petitions and you really see the petitions going up through the late 19th century. After that they tend to not have been saved always, but certainly in the earlier years you can always find them. So in my own case, I was able to find when they were creating a new county in 1854, I have an ancestor who actually signed one of the petitions for creating a new county, but he also signed the Remonstrance against creating a new county.

Sam Howes (10m 18s):
So I think he was a little confused.

Diana (10m 26s):
That’s so fun. We don’t tend to petition the government like that nowadays. And so it’s kind of hard for us to understand that our ancestors did back in the day and that they could be in these types of records. Yeah. Some of the other records that we use a lot are tax records and vital records. So do you have some of those on the state level as well?

Sam Howes (10m 47s):
I don’t really have much for tax records. The state taxes more or less are sort of data all added up. So it’s not really talking much about individuals, but what we do have is we do a lot with towns at deorganized. So they were towns and now they’re kind of reverting back to an unorganized territory. And when that happens, their municipal records are transferred to us. So we do have sort of valuation books and some tax records for those. But for the most part, we don’t have a lot

Diana (11m 18s):
Interesting. So those would probably be more on the county level.

Sam Howes (11m 23s):
I think in Maine it would be more at the town level itself.

Diana (11m 28s):
That’s right. I tend to spend a lot of time in Southern research where we don’t have town level government, but good old, new England, those great town records. So to do that, that mind shift. And then vital records, do you have a collection of statewide birth, marriage, death, all of those?

Sam Howes (11m 45s):
Yeah. So it’s sort of a confusing thing. So we have the vital records. The state didn’t begin registering until 1892, for the most part. Although we house those records until 1922, we don’t issue them. The vital records office here in Maine issues those. That being said, we do have the vital record returns, which are basically the vital record card that the town submitted to the state think of the 1920s. So we have copies of those older records, but it’s only for, I think the percentage is about 20% of the towns actually did that. So it’s not a complete record by any means. But on top of that, when those towns, the organize, we also received their vital records.

Sam Howes (12m 27s):
So we would have those as well.

Diana (12m 31s):
Okay. That’s so good to know,

Sam Howes (12m 32s):
Probably should point out something too with those vital records, because I think people take them as fact, this returns, it’s not really always the truth. I know my ancestors lived in one town that did submit their records and they’re supposed to be a copy of what was on the original record, but whoever the town clerk was at the time, for whatever reason, decided to record all of his sort of genealogical research and so added information to the records that was not on the original. So things like, primarily those records at the time and, you know, the 1800s didn’t include the parents’ names on a marriage record, but he would add them in and in my case incorrectly. So it looks like a nice official record, but not necessarily trustworthy.

Nicole (13m 18s):
Wow. It’s interesting. That just shows how important it is to find the original, you know, it’s just so interesting. These derivatives, when people make copies of records, what they’ll do, and usually it’s accidental, but it’s so interesting to hear about the town clerk. Just, you know, I’m going to go ahead and amend this and how did I think I know here. Yeah. Wow. So tell us more about how you got started as an archivist.

Sam Howes (13m 41s):
So I started here as a researcher. I actually came when I was in high school and did some research then for my genealogy, then I went on and did a history degree and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with the history degree. I wasn’t sure where to move on with that. So I came back here to Maine and I decided, well, I’ll go volunteer at the archives and see how I liked that. I liked it quickly, quickly was able to get a contract position here that had opened up. And so then I went and did my master’s in archive administration and luckily timed it just right. So that when I was done, there was a few people retiring. And so I was able to kind of get right back in.

Nicole (14m 21s):
How perfect is that, that really worked out well. That’s cool. I am curious to hear a little more about your, your master’s of library administration. Is that what it was called?

Sam Howes (14m 34s):
Archive Administration.

Nicole (14m 35s):
Okay. That’s neat. Where is that degree offered? Is that a common one that you can find in a lot of universities?

Sam Howes (14m 40s):
So over here it would usually be MLIS, which is a Masters of Library and Information Services, I want to say, but I actually went to school in Wales where it was just a straight Master’s in Archive Administration. It was Aberystwyth University is where I went,

Nicole (14m 57s):
Well, that’s really cool. I want to go to school in Wales.

Sam Howes (15m 3s):
And that was what worked out really well timing wise was, over there it’s a year long degree. Over here it’s generally a two year degree and two, because I did the one-year degree, the timing worked out that there was the vacancies here. So

Nicole (15m 17s):
Perfect. And when you were doing that over in Wales, was there like hands-on training at an archive they have, or was it more theoretical and then you volunteer to practice?

Sam Howes (15m 26s):
I was kind of a mixture of both. It was mostly theoretical, but then we did sort of study trips, which was actually very exciting place to do that because we’ve got to go to the National Library of Wales is right in the same town. And they had, like, one of the things we got to see was Henry the Eighth’s personal Bible. So it was kind of fun. We got to go to the Westminster Abbey archives and the parliamentary archives. Yeah. So it was pretty cool.

Nicole (15m 54s):
Absolutely. That sounds like a fantastic time.

Diana (15m 57s):
Yeah. Nicole and I both did study abroad in London, so we know all about how fun it is to do school and then go onsite to go see some of these things. There’s just nothing like it. It’s awesome. Yeah. Well, I am looking at your website and really, really curious about your perspective on how best to use the catalog, because I know that’s the key to getting us into the records and discovering what the archives has, but every single state archives website that I’ve looked at is organized a little differently and their catalogs a little different. So I’m hoping you’ll give us the inside scoop about how to use it and what we should do as researchers.

Sam Howes (16m 38s):
Yeah. So we just launched our first catalog in 2021. So that was pretty exciting before that it was really just either come in and see what we have and look at that paper, finding aids, or just send an email or call and ask questions. And so this was a big deal. So what we’ve done is because we, because as I mentioned earlier, we did have sort of a backlog of real processing and getting down to the item level, but we’ve basically done is just gone to the box level. I prefer to browse a lot of the times, so I will kind of follow the hierarchy within it’s called archive space is the software that we use. So that’s probably what I’ll refer to it as, but it’s our catalog.

Sam Howes (17m 20s):
So I like to browse through the agencies and sort of work down through the hierarchy and see what’s there, but you can also do searching. So the big thing for it is more often than not, you’re not going to find something by typing in someone’s name, because as I said, we’ve only got down to the box level. So if you’re looking for a specific record, it’s probably not going to have been cataloged yet. What we’ve started working on, which has a little more to that level that we’re looking for is some of the legislative graveyard and some of the executive council records, which the executive council is actually a very useful tool because a lot of things went through that part of the government, pretty much they had to approve like everything that happened everywhere.

Sam Howes (18m 6s):
So you find a lot of Native American petitions through there and you find pardon records through there. And when they were creating a new branch of the militia, all of these things were going through that body. So we’ve cataloged from 1820 up to 1848. And we’re hoping to really ramp up going through and creating these file lists. Some of the early York county court records have also been catalogued at the item level. So there are a few cases where you’ll be able to type a name and see something come up. But most of the time it’s not going to happen that way.

Diana (18m 43s):
Yeah. So we have to dig, we have to have some ideas of what to look for. Yeah. So say someone has an ancestor that was in Maine and maybe the mid 1800s, what would they do to get started? Would they need to have any idea of what their ancestor was involved in or is there someplace that they could just start in the archives?

Sam Howes (19m 4s):
Yeah. So for the most part, you’re going to want to have some idea of what you’re looking for. You might want to know, oh, he might’ve been in a court case. So let’s look at the court records or that kind of thing. Like I said, generally, if you just sort of search a name, you’re not going to come up with much, unless they were involved in that executive council or the legislative records, but definitely having a little information to go on first is very helpful for both of us.

Diana (19m 30s):
Right. So maybe even doing a good survey of their life and their locations where they live, you know, knowing if they were maybe in a military event or just any kind of details we’ll get to.

Sam Howes (19m 42s):
Okay. So the one thing I would do is if you know where they lived, a lot of times sort of the legislative petitions and things are cataloged by the town. So you might want to say, okay, I know he lived here or she lived there and then you want to look okay, I’m going to type up that town and see if there’s any records from that town where they might’ve signed a petition. Okay. That’s even how they did, like when someone was pardoned back, then people would sign petitions for that saying they were for the person being pardoned or against it. So there’s, there’s a lot of petitions in different parts of government back then.

Diana (20m 15s):
So the locality is going to be really key tracking down the locality where your ancestor was and then using that as a search term.

Nicole (20m 24s):
Yeah. Well, I just have to say, I was thinking, do I have any ancestors from Maine? And I remembered that the Mayos in my dad’s side of the family came over to Maine and London, New York county in the 1800s from Saddleworth, England. So I just put in Mayo and guess what? I found something, a petition of Samuel Mayo, praying that his factory may be exempt from taxation in 1821. So how fun is that?

Diana (20m 55s):
Those petitions, I tell ya, those are so fun.

Nicole (20m 58s):
So this is the brother of my ancestor. He is the older brother of Margaret Mayo. Margaret Mayo was the mother of Myra Mayo. Mom. You might remember her name.

Diana (21m 10s):
Yes. If I remember right, there was a little bit of a mystery about her birth and something about her family that I can’t remember if we figured it out.

Nicole (21m 18s):
Well, we don’t know her father. She was an illegitimate child born in England, so that’s right. But how fun. And now I can ask you to pull that record for me, Sam. Yeah. But it looks like it’s a filed under the files created by the Senate while in session legislative graveyard, 1820 first legislature, 1821. Yep. Let me see if I’m interpreting this right. He was petitioning the legislature in 1821 that he wouldn’t have to pay taxes on his factory. I wonder why he thought he could, everybody has to pay taxes.

Diana (21m 58s):
Well, why not try to get out of it?

Nicole (22m 2s):
Well, if I remember right, this family had quite a few factories in England and then they must’ve started those up again. And I think they were doing clothing, uh woolen mills. They had woolen mills in old England and then they started a woolen mill in America. That’s what it says, at least on his life sketch that one of my cousins posted here on FamilySearch. So that’s fun. And one thing that’s really nice about this page here in your archive catalog is that it has a little button for a citation. So that’s fun.

Sam Howes (22m 31s):
Yeah. I’m hoping we can edit that in the future. I’m trying to, of course I do Genealogy. I try to evidence explained as much as possible and I definitely want to try and have things follow some sort of format like that as much as I can.

Nicole (22m 48s):
So the software that you guys are using the archive space just have kind of a default citation.

Sam Howes (22m 52s):
I think so. Yeah. We’ve been discussions about sort of changing that a little bit.

Nicole (22m 57s):
That’s nice. It does have some of the elements there probably just need to tweak it a bit. Yeah. How great. So let’s say one of our listeners can go ahead and find something they want to order. What is the next step? Is there an order form that they would email to you?

Sam Howes (23m 11s):
So we don’t have an order form. I think we’re possibly going to be adding some features that like a request button. We don’t have that currently. So basically they would just send an email and the most helpful thing to include in the email is just the URL to the page or on so that we can go back and look at it. And then we have all the information we need. Then we would pull the record and depending on the size, we would just scan it and send it out to you so you have it.

Nicole (23m 40s):
Cool. So for a petition like this, were these usually just on like legal sized paper or what kind size do you think this petition might be?

Sam Howes (23m 47s):
It would probably be just legal size. Yeah.

Nicole (23m 51s):
That’s neat. Tell us some more about researching in a State Archive. So if I were to walk into the main state archives, you know, what kind of things would you recommend?

Sam Howes (24m 0s):
So definitely try to have a purpose, know what you’re planning to try and look for. That’s a big help. I definitely always say, and this is just from my own experience, going places too, is try to get in touch with them before you go, because you might be able to find out one, it’s not worth my trip because I might not really have anything useful, but also finding out things like, oh, they might be closed this day for something or something might not be accessible for one reason or another. I definitely think it’s always worth getting in touch ahead of time. Especially when we have such a large collection. Sometimes there are things in the catalog that just are very generic. So I think we have a couple of record series that say things like case files.

Sam Howes (24m 42s):
So if we don’t know which box might be in right away, it might take us some time to find it. So it’s always better in my opinion, to get in touch in advance so that you’re not sitting around waiting for us to possibly have to find something in the 60,000 boxes that we have. But generally when you come in, you would get the front desk and you would get a researcher card with us. Then if you had some questions about what we have, we would then work with you to kind of figure some of that out.

Nicole (25m 9s):
So what is the researcher card? And what’s it for?

Sam Howes (25m 13s):
A researcher card is just, we just have you fill out a researcher form and I have, you’d show us an ID. So we know who you are, who you are, then you would use that actually to sign in and out whenever you come in in the future, it just allows us to have your contact information if we need to contact you, but anything that’s basically it.

Nicole (25m 33s):
Cool.

Diana (25m 33s):
Well, I’m just kind of doing a little browsing and I’m seeing that you have a lot of military records. We didn’t talk about military earlier, but what kind of military records do you have? Just very curious.

Sam Howes (25m 43s):
Yeah. So the military records are a mix depending on the time period. So we definitely would have records from the state militia. So that would be from like 1820, basically through the civil war. And then it changed to the national guard in 1893. But the civil war records we have are the biggest set of records that we have for military records. And we have, we have enlistment papers and muster rolls and correspondence and all kinds of records with that. We also have some records from the Mexican American war in 1846, I believe is the year, not much, basically just muster rolls. And then we have the same thing for the Aroostook War in 1838.

Sam Howes (26m 27s):
If you haven’t heard of it before. That was primarily a war between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick, which was debating over where the northeastern boundary was. There was never any actual battles, but so we have muster rolls for that. And really once you get after the civil war, the amount of records we have for military really drops. We do have like enlistment records for them in national guard through I think the 1940s. But in terms of any actual war records, that mostly it would be federal,

Diana (27m 6s):
Right. I am so interested in the civil war records because that were affected so many people. And I think sometimes we think only on the national level, you know, the federal CMSR for the military records, but it sounds like a researcher could find some really specific things about their ancestor and their involvement in the civil war, on the state level. So that’s kind of a good reminder to us to search the different jurisdictions and not get hung up on just one specific place for a record set, which is why I love talking about state archives. We know that we should be going to the U S census for our census records, but then sometimes there’s the state censuses.

Diana (27m 47s):
And so it’s always so good to be reminded to go check all the different places our ancestor could be listed. Yeah.

Sam Howes (27m 54s):
And speaking of that, we do have a state census from 1837 case anyone needs to know that,

Diana (28m 2s):
I love state census record. Yeah.

Sam Howes (28m 4s):
It’s unfortunate because it’s not the whole state. They only did I think basically the two big cities and then the unorganized territories. They didn’t do every town, but still useful if anyone lived in those areas.

Diana (28m 18s):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I’m guessing that you’re going to be continually working on this catalog and adding collections. And so this would be something very much in progress then the researchers should probably check back often to see what else has been added. Is that right?

Sam Howes (28m 35s):
Yeah. That’s the goal.

Diana (28m 36s):
That’s a great service. I did have one thing that I wanted to note that I thought was just a great addition that you did. I was looking at a record and I liked that it talked about copyright and it said, there’s no known copyright on this, which is kind of neat because that’s something we talk about often, you know, knowing what we can use, what we can’t use and how great to have that right there on the page, telling us what we can do with it. So yeah, I’m impressed. You guys have done a great job with putting us together. Thank you. And I love seeing that there are some actual digital images. I mean, there’s nothing better than being able to actually click on an image and getting to read it. So yeah.

Sam Howes (29m 14s):
And we have a lot of stuff that is digitized. It’s just, hasn’t been linked to the capital.

Diana (29m 20s):
Yeah. So in those cases, someone just sending you an email or calling could have you just email them that image really easily because it’s already digitized.

Sam Howes (29m 30s):
Yep.

Diana (29m 30s):
Nice. What is the best way to access those digital images? Is there a simple way to see what’s digitized?

Sam Howes (29m 37s):
So there’s a few ways I already mentioned FamilySearch earlier. So like the court records are available through FamilySearch more often than not, but they’re all found through the catalog, not indexed, but there’s a website that I use quite frequently. It’s called MaineGenealogy.net. And they have copies of some indexes that were created here at the archives at one point. And then I think some of their own indexes that they’ve created. And so I use that for things like divorces, they have a great divorce index, so you can find the volume and page number there, and then you can go find the record through FamilySearch and the actual images should be there.

Sam Howes (30m 20s):
So it’s sort of using things together at the moment,

Diana (30m 26s):
Oh, that’s a good trick.

Sam Howes (30m 27s):
And then we also have a website that the state library actually started. It’s called Digital Maine, and it’s just DigitalMaine.com. And we’ve put up quite a few records there on the first sort of big batch that we did was we had found that we had a huge collection of alien registrations from 1940. I want to say it was about 40,000 records and we scan them all and put them up on there. So those are all searchable now through that website. And that’s where we’re primarily putting the digital content we’ll then put the link into the catalog so that you can get between the two from there.

Nicole (31m 5s):
Oh, that’s great. How nice to have that link there to be able to search the catalog and then just go straight to the digitized record? Yeah, well, very cool. It sounds like Maine has really got a lot of records online and that there’s some good records there at the archives that people can find through the catalog. So it’s just wonderful to have this new catalog. I’m so excited that you guys launched it this year. Congratulations. And it just seems like a very wonderful resource for genealogists.

Diana (31m 34s):
Yeah. I’m just so wishing I had some ancestors in Maine. Why are my ancestors not in Maine? I guess we have, we have my husband’s ancestor up there, but whenever I find out about these new collections, I really want to go do some research. So yeah, it’s just exciting. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and talking about what you do. And I think the lesson here for everyone to learn, who’s been listening is to dig into these state archives, wherever you’re researching, or if you’re in another country, you know, dig into the archives of whatever country you’re in, because really, I think you can attest to this Sam, that what is online is just such a small fraction of the records out there.

Sam Howes (32m 20s):
Absolutely.

Diana (32m 20s):
So, you know, when we’re up against our brick walls, we’ve got to dig a little deeper and see what else we can find. Yep.

Nicole (32m 27s):
Well, that was fun. Thanks so much, Sam. We hope you have a great year with the new catalog and we will talk to you again soon. Hopefully. Yeah.

Sam Howes (32m 36s):
All right. Thanks for having me.

Diana (32m 38s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.

Nicole (33m 14s):
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