Captain Wellings letters home

I'm in the process of transcribing the letters written by Captain Wellings, the letters he wrote home to his wife Dolly (Dorothea) that I copied when I visited the Naval War College.  I took photos, JPEG's of over 200 pages, so it may take a bit.   When I come to Gatlinburg in September, I plan to have them bound in a 3-ring binder so anyone wanting to read them can see them easily.  So you ask, if I have photos, then why not just print out those images?  I thought about it, but there are some problems.  First, the captain has a slanted and very flat style of writing that makes some words difficult to read.  On the Memories of STRONG page, there is a letter that he wrote to my Aunt Lillian, and you can see what I mean.  So a lot of the transcribing is spent in looking closely at the context of the sentence to determine what a particular word might be.  I've worked for doctors in the past, and if I could read their writing, I should be able to read his!  Also, some of the photos are not great.  I did the best I could at the time, but some are just slightly fuzzy or opaque.  I can read them on the computer, but to have that transfer to a printed page might be difficult.   I like things in binders, it's a quirk of mine that I like to organize things and have them at hand.  If people want to read his thoughts and learn about his time on the ship, this is the best way.

Also, I'm thrilled to be "meeting" on line some of Captain Welling's family.  So far I've added a two nephews, a neice and a great-nephew!  They are offering me personal anecdotes and family information, and coming on board to meet the rest of the STRONG family.  I'm very encouraged to have Tim, Cindy, Bob and Ben on board.  It's also exciting to see the hits on the web site increasing every day!  Do keep visiting, I'll try to post something new each week.  And again, if you want to post something here please let me know.  I'm happy to just copy and past anything you'd like to contribute to the blog.

-Tammi