Reading and Transcribing Maple Grove History
By Marilyn Kettering Badger
February 22, 2016In working on the church history, I soon found that some of it was becoming unreadable because the writing utensil used was fading into oblivion. So one of my first tasks was to try translating the written pages and transcribing them to the computer. Hopefully this will keep the essence of what was written so many years ago. In the process, I had to guess sometimes and figure out what word the spelling was or what the faded words were. I tried using exactly what seemed to be on the pages of the legal-sized books. Then one day, by some “glitch” I did not know existed, my computer started correcting all the “mistakes” it saw from the original documents in spellings and words and capitalizations, etc. even rejecting some words and names as non-words and names. (I did go back through and reread it all for clarity but I did not double check the computer’s incorrectness for its corrected spellings. Going back over the three very large books with fading print, etc. was beyond my patience level at that point. If there is a two-person team who would like to work on this, I welcome them to step forward. MCKB)
Some words used are no longer in use or infrequently in use. One that occurred often in the early pages was the word jollification. I had to laugh the first time I saw it, thinking it was a made-up word. But in checking several dictionaries, I found it was indeed in Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Not only jollification but also jollity and jollify all from the root word jolly.
Jollification
By the way, have you ever heard of attending a jollification? Add that word to your vocabulary. The dictionary says a jollification is “a merrymaking; jovial festivity”. What that was could be “in the eye of the beholder” - open to each individual’s translation. Maybe that is why we do not use the term today - there is too much ambiguity and not enough specifics to make the term useful. You may find a use for it. It seemed to be a frequent offense by early church members, who, after asking the church’s forgiveness, were again given full membership status. Sometimes this happened over and over again. What is a jollification? A noun, it means attending a “fanciful” party or gathering, i.e. a country fair, parade, celebration – or going to a place where there was a gathering serving alcohol or doing unacceptable things (whatever they were). This is not a word we hear in today’s world where “everything goes” or “I’ve got my rights!” attitudes prevail. Today people seem to think that what God wants for us seems to be whatever we chose to do; not, what He wants for us to do.
Keywords: history
