Mini-Review of CamScanner

Treasure Chest Thursday
Darling/McAllister/Lambe

By Don Taylor

I love software that helps digitize documents nicely. Some time ago I added CamScanner by INTSIG Information Co., Ltd to my phone. It allows a person to take a photo of a document with your phone. Once the photo is taken you select the area you desire and the software automagically adjusts the photo to be a flat image. That way you don’t have to be exactly centered over a document. That can really help if a flash is needed or if the pages can’ It is easy to transfer the image to your computer via the internet. The only problem with the software I’ve found is operator error. When my wife and I were visiting my wife’s mother I used CamScanner to “scan” some pages from Margaret Lambe’s Prayer Book. I took the photos, cropped them, then moved on. It wasn’t until I got home and saw the images on a much larger screen that I saw my operator error.  I had cropped the photos too close and missed some detail. Not so badly that I can’t use the images, but badly enough to remind myself that it is easy to crop the photos too severely and I need to be more careful.

On the same day that Margaret Lambe received a Bible from she also received “The Book of Common Prayer.” The inscription in the prayer book is much more legible than it was in her Bible and clearly shows it was received from Rev. Wm Cassidi. (I’ve adjusted the person in the post about the Bible to reflect the name more legible in this image.) The bad part is that through operator error, I cut off the “e” in Lambe and the “di” in Cassidi. Oops.

Having a small Bible and a “Book of Common Prayer” was an important part of the religious life of 19^th Century parishioners in the Church of England and I’m sure these two books were important gifts to the 17-year-old Margaret.

Inscription – Book of Common Prayer to Margaret Lambe

The Inscription reads:

Margaret Lambe
With the best
Wishes of
The Rev. Wm Cassidi
Grindon
April 30, 1877.

I am still unclear what “Grindon” is or what it means. Had I seen only this inscription, I would have surmised it was the Reverend’s surname. However, the Bible inscription appears to be something separate from his surname so I’m still confused.  have some difficulty making out some of the words, and have tried my best. I’m not confident of Mr. McCassidi’s first name nor of the word below the line.

Like the Bible, on a second inscription page, it shows the book went to

Elizabeth Darling Kemon
Born March 22, 1906
granddaughter of
Margaret Lamb

Again, Elizabeth had no children, so she passed it on to the “niece of Betty Kemon.”

Conclusion

• I need to be more careful when cropping images using CamScanner.
• Sometimes two inscriptions by the same person in two places can help reading and transcribing transcriptions.