In his foreward, Smith explains his reasons for compiling an index to Isaiah's History and notes its necessity to the researcher.

Foreword

In our search for information concerning our ancestors from Digby County, Nova Scotia,(Jacob Smith, Marguerite Thibaud, Joseph Doyle, and Elizabeth Dousset) our attention was drawn to Isaiah W, Wilson's "Digby County". Although that book has long been out of print a facsimile edition has recently been published by Mika Studios of Belle-ville, Ontario.

The work is a vertiable goldmine of information on the area. Clearly it cannot name very person who lived in the more than a century with which it deals. It does, however, mention more than 5,000 individuals.

Unfortunately the book was not indexed and its value to the researcher consequently is somewhat diminished.

To continue our own work we found it essential to set up an index of persons - a task it seemed would never end. Knowing that our work would be duplicated by every serious student of the area and that the cumulative hours expended would come to an astronomical total, we concluded we had a responsibility to make the results of our efforts generally available. We have therefore taken the time to convert our working card file into the index which is here presented.

Each user of the index will share a lot of our gratitude to the compilers wife for her contribution of many long hours in the extensive proof-reading which has, of course, been essiential. We trust the residual errors are few.

We have been told in Digby County, by persons who knew Isaiah Wilson, that his volume was a work of love. Not only did he spend years walking through the county collecting the information for the book; when it came publication time he walked to Halifax(about 150 miles) and back to have the printing done - and paid for it himself.

Under these conditions it would have been a miracle if there were no typographical errors in the book. The miracle did not occur. We suspect the author never saw a proof. The subject matter deals with both French and English names; the printer(if me may conclude from the frequent misuse of French diacritical marks) apparently knew no French.

Many names in the area have varied in spelling over the years, particularly names of French origin . Spelling rules a century ago were far less rigid than they are today. Farmers could well be solid citizens and yet not be literate. Names were often spelled as they sounded to the writer, there being no standard against which to measure.

Bearing these factors in mind the user of this index must realize that there are no standards the compiler can use to fix "proper: spellings of names. The index, therefore, presents names in the manner in which they appear in the text, with the exception of the inclusion of the abbreviation Wm. under listings for the name William.

Great care should be used to examine all possible variants of the name being checked. Scanning the entire index might easily disclose some otherwise unrecognized possiblilities as to the object of the search.

Military titles have been ignored in the index. They are too subject to vhange and to be usuable as a firm identification of a specific individual, except in the rarest of cases.

Females, insofar as possible, have been indexed under both their maiden and married names.

Extensive effort has been made to index not only references to individuals by name in the text but also references to them in other ways, such as their relationship to another named person. It is for this reason the index has been titled as an index of persons, rather than an index of names. While the name of the person may not appear on the page shown in the index, a careful reading of the text should provide the user with the identity of the indexed person.

Names which are a part of a proper geographic name are not indexed.

We trust our efforts may be of assistance to many others

L.H.S.Jr.

Clearwater, Florida
November 1974