So today I finally was able to get my netbook running again (while it is good for some things, being consistently reliable is not one of those things) and was able to finish up the vitals and really dig into my soldiers documents. Setting up the vitals was a bit mind numbing to say the least, especially as a lot of the information was either not available (such as his physical appearance other than height) or completely illegible (I had to estimate the year of his birth based on his age of enlistment and the date he enlisted.

When I went through my images to pick the one to upload to Drive with OCR I ended up picking the one that discusses Adam Meyer’s  surgical records on it. When I did eventually get it to work correctly, it got the introduction portion and the sign off portion correctly. However, the entire main point of the transcription was completely skipped over. I would rather just type the transcriptions up myself as opposed to relying on this and having to pick out all the tiny errors or just have to fill in for all the large errors.

The source I chose was the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs which focused on the newspaper clippings. These clippings are public domain it would seem and the page was created to showcase various viewpoints on the war from the people living through it at the time.  These viewpoints from soldiers, family members, and other random people help bring the war vividly to life before our eyes, making researching these soldiers much more interesting and more meaningful for me as a student and for other people with their own personal interests.

Learning such small things about his life as well as his regiments movements has made Adam Meyer that much more of a real person to me.