This blog site is to facilitate the creation and editing of a readable version of Estelle Hebert’s memoirs entitled My Valley of Tears. Estelle penned her first version of her memoirs in French. Later she translated them into English. She used pen and paper to write them. I obtained a photocopy of the English version from her daughter Geneva, my mother.

I have scanned all the pages of the manuscript to Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) files. This will help in preserving the “original” photocopies I have in my possession. It also makes the hand written pages available online for all to see. I envision typing into editable pages from these files. The penned version is 136 pages long and is difficult to read for various reasons and will take some time to type into pages.

Typing the pages will require slow reading, translating, and probably investigation to get the correct names, places, and statements as close to their intended meaning. I would like to see the first typed version as close to actual words, letters, punctuation, grammar as possible. Then I would like to see a second version edited for spellings, grammar, and readability that does not change the substantive content, but makes Estelle’s story more publishable.

This is just the start. I can see this project taking quite some time. I think that by putting it online, it has a much better chance of being compeleted and allowing more people (relatives) have access to Estelle’s My Valley of Tears and have a richer understanding of their history and from whence they come. But probably a much better reason to type up Estelle’s autobiography, is because she hoped it would be.