Hertford Museum, England

Got sucked down a wonderful rabbit hole this morning. I just finished the bibliography for the Tidd book and someone thought I needed a break. Twenty pages of books, articles, websites, etc. found in the research preparation for the book. Then this morning I had an odd email from the Hertford Museum group about a bill. I can't open it and maybe for the best as it might be a scam, but what it did was lead me to explore hundreds of pictures of a town I visited while in England in 1997. It is amazing what has happened in this town. Our ancestors the Tidd brothers left there in 1637 and came to Charlestown, Massachusetts. The day we were there they were having a celebration and most places were closed that day. It is one of my most treasured genealogy serendipity moments. The pictures and written history now available online is just amazing. If you want a fun adventure go down the rabbit hole. I have twenty pages of notes to add to the project.

Send Those Message Requests

This past week two people I worked with on their family history finally heard back from a message they or I sent to a DNA match from ancestry.com and/or as a contributor under latest changes at familysearch.org. Neither of them are genealogy matches to me.

Washington County Museum, Hillsboro, Oregon

Tonight my feet are just killing me, but it is worth the cost of researching at a local history center. The Washington County Museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, has a wonderful repository of records. Some of my ancestors donated some nice pictures and two priceless autograph albums. Years ago, likely about twenty, I made a couple of trips there. In doing so I created a three page list of items to look up. Now after almost four years of living closer I finally made arrangements and made the journey to follow up on those records. My good friend Tricia drove and looked up stuff for the Watts family for me. The researcher was fully prepared with having the boxes ready for me to start working. Then we saw another friend and later on another friend came to oversee the fun. After four hours of photographing items of interest, 190 pictures, documents and other materials, I had to quit for the day. There is one more box that I hope to get to in a couple of weeks. Now I need to compare my collection of family pictures and see what they do not have. This is all part of my focus for the present to organize and make useful what we have and then share with others. Now I need to go put up my feet for a few days!

I would like to sincerely thank Debi Knox for preparing records for me to come and take pictures of for our family history. The collection included items from my grandfathers older sister and his older brother. There are two autograph albums, one of which my great grandfather wrote in. It was so nice to arrive with things organized for our four hour work out in taking many pictures. Debi went one step further and pulled information for the Watts family who lived in Scappoose, and Milwaukie. Friends joined in as Tricia and I worked very patiently to capture the images of history held in this collection. What a fantastic place to visit!

The Future of My Work

I made great progress in organizing my research, class, client, volunteer work, etc. paperwork for the last few years. Following a similar process to that which was done in sorting the materials at the Watts' house, the collection is now divided up by family and personal mementos; volunteer work and donated time; my personal family research collection; the collection of work for others including clients. Those are contained in three small totes and one large tote. The remainder of materials to sort are in two large totes from when we moved. This is a project that has been patiently waiting for me!

There are a few things I learned along the way and I hope to be more careful in the future of my work. Here is a list of items to consider when processing genealogy work either for yourself or others.

Celebrating 45,000 Blog Views Research Review

 In celebrating reaching 45,000 blog views yesterday, in less than five years, I want to share my latest completed project results. This project started in mid-August of this year. See previous blog post, Caught Up in the Research.  In less than three months the extended family comprised 322 people and 99 marriages. While there are additional people and marriages, the project focused on the direct line families. This may seem like a small database of names, but there were 134 documents copied, many others indexed only information, and several online family trees accessed. The concluding thirty-four page report included ten pages of document information.

Caught Up In the Research

Do you ever get on a roll in doing family history research and you can hardly make yourself stop long enough to take a breath, or eat, or sleep? That has been me the past couple of weeks, but Sunday night was the most challenging yet. So here is a walkthrough of what happened in the research for a client project.

Respecting Personal Boundaries in Genealogy and Life

How many times have you had someone you don't know call on the telephone or knock on the door, expecting you to allow an intrusion into your life? Maybe as we age we become more sensitive to such people who assume that we are open to discussing with them our lives and the lives of our families. When doing genealogy and family history research these same personal boundaries are subject to intrusive questions from complete strangers.