Serendipity at the Cemetery

When first beginning my research in family history, my grandparents and great aunt and uncle took me to Lone Fir Cemetery to show me where the burial sites are for my great great grandmother and some of her children. What was odd at the time is we did not know where her husband was buried. Later in my journey of discovering the family story we returned to this cemetery and went to the office to see what other information they might be able to provide. At that time they were very liberal about sharing the information from the two files on this family.

Ancestry.com - Thinking Outside the Box

Did you ever watch Ken Jennings play on Jeopardy? How did he out think the computer and his competitors? He played seventy-five games and won over $3,000,000. Even playing against the computer "Watson" he held his own though he did not win. Recently another contestant Arthur Chu won almost $300,000 in twelve games. People were upset that he did not play using normally expected strategies, but was able to think outisde the box of ways to play. In today's world one must be mentally prepared to think outside the box and especially the computer box.

Ancestry.com and Adapting to Change

This week during a break from tending our granddaughters there were a few minutes to work on some research at ancestry.com. In doing so on Thursday, March 6, an odd thing happened. For the first search in my typical fashion using the "Old Search," which was my favorite, the results seemed very much as those of the past. Then when going back to change some of the criteria of the search there appeared suddenly an entirely different type of search results. Although we had been forewarned that the "Old Search" function would disappear, nothing mentally prepared me for encountering the new functions randomly in my every day work.

Blog Posts and the Oscars

Today marked 35,000 post views for this blog. In April will be the five year blogiversary. This is my 250th post and it is amazing the variety of topics that they cover. With seventy followers and many others who are reading, it is an honor to know that there is interest in what is written. Tonight I watched the Oscars, which is not something that I normally would do. It was entertaining and thought provoking.

New England Books by Roger Thompson

This past year the opportunity to read New England books written by Roger Thompson occurred several times. Roger teaches at the University of East Anglia in England during the school year and often spends time in New England to explore the early settlers. His book, Divided We Stand, Watertown, Massachusetts 1630-1680, is a phenomenal history of a place and time where at least eight of my early ancestral families lived. Even though it only has 201 pages of the actual text, there are an additional 50 pages of end notes. This is followed by an index of ten pages, which does not appear to include the end notes.

Valentine's Week Reflections

This has been an amazing week. A week ago we were snowed in and home bound entertaining our youngest granddaughter. Then when we exchanged this granddaughter for her older sister after the great thaw began, it was on to a week full of genealogy happenings.

SLIG 2014 Part IV - Conclusion of Group Project

This concludes the summary of our group project. Last week the focus was on the census records for George C. Pollard, his father James Pollard and his son George C. Pollard. Now comes the really juicy stuff, the kind of documents that help us come to know the family members better.