So recently I’ve gotten back to my sporadic genealogy hobby. We’re very lucky in that we have stacks of info for both lines (Wharff/Butler & Sargent) through my maternal grandfather. One of the best of these is a book, Thomas Butler And His Descendants: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Thomas and Elizabeth Butler of Butler’s Hill, South Berwick, Maine, 1674-1886, compiled by Dr. George H. Butler and published in 1886. We have an original copy of the book but it’s in sad shape.

Due to a computer glitch, I lost the original file I had worked on in my genealogy program. So I have to redo all the Butler information. I decided that I would look on the web to see if I could find another copy. And not only did I find the book but I found it on CD-ROM! It’s a PDF scan of the original book but it’s been all OCR-ed and edited to it’s even text searchable. And it was only $12 including shipping. I was also able to find (now that I knew to look) a CD-ROM of the reference, The Sargent Record compiled by Edwin Everertt Sargent, that my great aunt referenced in all her Sargent research. The web is a wonderful thing. (BTW, although it wasn’t the only place by any means, both CDs were purchased on ebay from 2 different sellers.)