Hunting for Family Burial Information and Serendipity

For the past month I have been searching for information for a client who is looking to find information on her mother's grandfather's brother's family. The project entailed contacting various cemeteries, funeral homes and public libraries, while also doing some online searching for obituaries and newspaper articles related to the family. Out of those eighteen contacts made, there were several that provided valuable material about this family.

Surprising Serendipity Moments through the Portal

In honor of the blogiversary of GopherGenealogy@blogspot.com
I want to share two wonderful articles about two of my great grandmothers. Two weeks ago while working at the local Family Search (History) Center we were not busy, so I took some time to explore our premium websites.  The premium websites are accessible on the computers in Family Search Centers and then through the Portal provided through the familysearch.org website.

GopherGenealogy Two Year Blogiversary

I am a statistics person, so for the two-year blogiversary I want to again share some of the information provided for this blog through blogspot.com and compare it to the first year. This is a way for me to record this data and track the history of who is reading the posts, where they are located, what types of search engines they use, what browsers they use, what referring sites they are coming from, and what types of posts and pages they are most interested in.

Ole A. Brown - Finally the Serendipity Moment

Today while working on the family of Ole A. Brown there was a serendipity moment just waiting to happen. Back in 2005 I wrote about Ole A. for the writing contest for the Genealogical Forum of Oregon and was honored to receive an honorable mention. With this recognition came the joy of having my story published in their March 2006 issue of the Bulletin, their quarterly publication. It can be found on this blog as a page from the bar across the top.

Annie's Ghosts, Helping Us to Understand Our Own

There are surely ghosts in everyone's family and often we don't encounter them or share them with others. In the book, Annie's Ghosts, A Journey into a Family Secret, author Steve Luxenberg shares the ghosts his family encountered when they tried to understand a secret their mother kept from them. In his journalistic trained character he explores records many of us will never see. He was determined to peel away the layers to understand his mother's reasoning for maintaining the secret of her sister who had been committed to a mental institution.

Family Discoveries in Cambridge Cameos

Earlier this week I finished reading the book "Cambridge Cameos" by Roger Thompson. He is the author of several books about New England towns and people. Previously I shared comments about his book "From Death to Defiance" a book about Charlestown, Massachusetts. While my ancestors, the Tidd family, were principally in Charlestown, Lexington, New Town, Cambridge Farms and Woburn prior to the Revolutionary War, they were most likely caught up in changing boundaries as these towns evolved. This family was not found in Cambridge Cameos, but the Stedman family was.