Serendipity Within the Gates Family

Now, how would you feel if this email arrived in your inbox as this did in mine yesterday?

"Hello,

It was my good fortune last evening to have Googled my 3rd great grandfather's name and run into your blog! I knew very little about "Ardell" prior to that. I suspected he was an 1812 vet and had inklings he was down near Mankato at one time. A big issue for me was that I had 2 different death dates for him. Turns out he lived much longer than I imagined.

A Friend Provides an Early Morning Serendipity Moment

Sometimes I just don't feel like writing and I am not even sure why. I often get caught up in the project of the moment, losing focus on every day things. Then along comes a serendipity moment or hot topic and I can fill pages. This week I had one such experience with the Gates family. On Wednesday morning I awoke to find an email from a friend with whom I have collaborated on some New England research. This is what she sent:

"Check this out I think you will find something of interest."

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ski/scott/diligent.html

Created by Scott and Kathyrn (Leedom) Ives

Genealogy Serendipity Moment -Roena Gates Gender Change

Once in a while I go work in new.familysearch.org and input information about the families I am working on. Recently as I spent considerable time working on the Gates family history I returned to review their information. Roena Electa Gates is my husband's great-great-grandmother and our first link to the Gates family. She was married twice, the first time to Charles Robert Lamb in 1884 in Minnesota. They apparently had two children, Belva Mae born in Minnesota, and A. J. born in Montana. At this point we know very little about Charles and A. J. Lamb.

Genealogy Serendipity Moment - Gates and Tidd Connection

The Tidd family of Massachusetts has been my favorite research subject over the last forty years. This week as I further explored the Gates family I discovered that not only did both families live near each other as early settlers in America; they also lived near each other in England. Through discovering some new resources and analyzing the currently discovered data, I am having many serendipity moments and I am sure there are more to come.

Genealogy Seremdipity Moment - Ridgefield, Connecticut Post Office Ledger Books

When I began working in the Sherwood Historic Center, in their collection of Post Office Ledger Books for the town, the wealth of information for genealogical research astounded me. Lately, I have been reading the book, "Ridgefield in Review" by The Ridgefield 250th Anniversary Committee, Inc., published in 1958, 396 pages; about Ridgefield, Connecticut. I am about halfway through the book, as I am occupied with other projects. Imagine my surprise when, on page 206, I came across the following paragraphs in relation to their post office.

Genealogy Serendipity Moments - new.familysearch.org and the Gates Family

This week I am working on several projects. The first one completed was incorporating the information from new.familysearch.org for the Gates family. This came about because when I was working on the War of 1812 article about Ardil Gates, I borrowed two books from the GFO, Frederick J. Seaver, Historical Sketches Of Franklin County and Its Several Towns, and Silvio A. Bedini, Ridgefield in Review (Connecticut). Both are fantastic works, which provide information about the locality and the people who lived in the vicinity.

Genealogy Serendipity Moments - Received Ordered Gates Records

Today was awesome. As I headed out to work with a genealogy friend, I stopped to look in the mailbox. I have been anxiously awaiting a response from the New York State Archives about the War of 1812 records for Ardil Gates, and his brothers David and Richard. The box was empty, just as it had been on Tuesday, which was unusual after a Monday holiday. Then I just happened to look down and saw something in our newspaper box, which we never use. The night before we had snow and during the day, today, heavy rain. It just happened at the moment I was looking in the box that it was dry outside. The mail person must have dropped it off just moments before, or otherwise it would have been wet. That would have hugely disappointed me.

Genealogy Serendipity Moments - Paths to Discoveries

This week I have been working on the article for the War of 1812. In the process I did a thorough review of the pension file for Ardil Gates and decided to focus on his military experience. Again I don't want to give away too much of the story, but do want to share the serendipity moments involved in this research. Ardil served under Captain Rufus Tilden in the New York Militia. He volunteered at Malone on July 8, 1812 and served as a private and was released as a POW about December 1912. He includes this information in the pension applications, providing a bit more information in the second application. The U.S. Pension Office, stating that they can find no record of him being a POW, made me curious about finding such a record today. What I really wanted was a company record of the events surrounding his service.

Genealogy Serendipity Moments - Ordering Records for the Gates Family

The second blog post I wrote, on April 27, was on the experience of being sent information on the Gates Family, a vital resource for one of my husband's lines. Up until the past year I always said I would not work on his family history, as I have plenty of my own work to do. Then on my fourth post, on May 4, I wrote about an experience of connecting with another family genealogist for the LeBlanc line. These two contacts provided a great deal of documentation on the family research that saved us a considerable amount of time and financial costs.

Genealogy Serendipity Moments- The Gates Family

Serendipity moments occur frequently when doing genealogical research. My goal is to share some of these moments with you on a weekly basis, hopefully on Wednesdays. I would love to hear about your genealogy serendipity moments.

About a month ago I went to Sweet Home, Oregon to present four lectures at the Sweet Home Genealogical Society. During the day one of the local researchers approached me to mention a computer research file of the Chapin Family Tree. It was created from information gathered by one of their members, and scanned by their society on 8 June 2010.