Serendipity in the Process of Writing

In the process of writing a family history book and it seems every time I pause in writing up pops something else that I need next. This week I found an online index of NEHGS and Essex County Vital Records for the town books up to 1850. This lead me to an easy resource for those records on Internet Archive. I should have made a list of these occurrences. Serendipity is one focus of my personal blog: gophergenealogy.blogspot.com

Books in Our Home and in Our Lives

My grandchildren ages 5 to 15 are amazed at my book collection. In my office genealogy books, in my husbands office his books and the children's books, in the hallway more genealogy, church, and others, and in the kitchen is a shelf of extended family books. The family books are from my parents, grandparents and other extended family. Some books left our home as our children moved out or wanted some for their own collections. We thinned them out some when we moved. It will be a hard day when they are no more ours!

The Book Process

I am still working on my book project. The research phase includes following all the bread crumbs left by previous researchers. When I finish with one, up pops another one. It is an amazing process. After reading an article about PERSI yesterday I went to explore the new set up at Allen County Public Library in Indiana. I found that my two articles are there as well as some for the surnames, but some are missing. The best part are the new listings of some older articles and some more recent. Today I sent in a request, which they replied to promptly and started working on today. The timeliness of these new discoveries feels like true serendipity. The key to it all is keeping an orderly record of where I have been, where I am at and what I want to do in the future.

Sharing Parties with Family Members

After my mother passed and I had been given her clothing and jewelry we had an evening when all female family members gathered and we had a sharing party. Everyone left with plenty of items they will treasure and I still have more. Whenever the grand kids come we often go through collections again. I am not overly concerned about the younger ones as I know these connections are so important. My mother also would buy things for me though the almost sixty years we had together. Later we had a sharing party of her photograph collections with all siblings and their spouses. Each had color sticky notes to mark the ones they wanted copies of. I ended up scanning all of the marked pictures and giving them flash drives with the copies.