German Ancestors Serendipity Moments

For over forty years my genealogy contained my elusive ancestor, Mary Schaffer. She is my grandmother's grandmother. The family history has been known for years, as her husband's line was traced by two family members, Catholic Priests, who traveled to Germany to document the male line. Her husband Frank/Franz Neppl was born in Arnbruck, Germany in 1852. He and his seven siblings all immigrated to the United States between 1860 and 1880. Their parents died in Germany.

Celebrating the Lives of our Ancestors

Today would have been my mother's 79th birthday and a few of us gathered to celebrate her life. My niece Stephanie whose birthday is this week as well and my sister in law Teri joined me for lunch, along with my youngest granddaughter who was primarily there for entertainment. So far this week I have been out to eat four times doing the same thing. On Monday for lunch I was with two of my favorite friends both named Cindy, and on Tuesday for lunch I was with Mariruth a cousin of my father and Karen another relative from that side of the family. Tuesday evening I took my husband out to eat. As you can probably guess I like to eat out and I don't cook much anymore. The same was true of my mother.

Using Local Records and Indexes

This past week my research took me to the Multnomah County Library to use the Oregon Vital Records Divorce Index. Before going, online research was done in the Oregon Marriage Indexes 1906-1924 and 1946-2008 at ancestry.com. It does seem odd that twenty-two years of marriages are missing in the index, but the index did cover the years of interest in the research. There are other indexes by counties that might provide the missing years information.

The library copy of the Divorce Index is by husband for the years 1961-2008 and they are on microfiche. A similar index is available at the Genealogical Forum of Oregon, on microfilm for the years 1946-1955, 1956-1960 and 1966-1970 and on microfiche for the years 1971-1989. So by using indexes from both of the resources one can cover the years from 1946-2008. By calling prior to making the trip I was able to confirm that they still had the index and exactly where in this very large library they were located.

Genealogy Connections on Facebook

Lately in conversation the amount of contacts with my friends on Facebook has come up. At the current time I have 621 friends, many of whom are genealogists. Every day there are many comments from these friends relating to the work they are doing and situations arising from their contacts with other genealogists. For my family contacts I maintain a separate list so they are my first read of the day. When time allows I like to take a moment to read the comments of others, many of them funny, entertaining and occasionally sharing challenges in their lives.

Telling the Truth or Lying and the Gray Area In Between

As genealogist's we explore the worlds of people sometimes known to us and others who are complete strangers. In the process we are given bits of information about people's lives and must discern the accuracy of the clues found within. Unfortunately there are people in this world who will lie to us in an attempt to thwart our investigative process.

A Lovely if Surreal Visit

Last night my friend invited us to join her family in a farewell barbeque at her home for the family of her birth daughter who had come to visit her from the east coast. I wrote about the experience of finding her birth daughter in a blog post on September 30, 2012. Since that time she and her husband made a trip east to become acquainted with her daughter and her family.

Back to the Blog

It has been twenty-four days since my last post, or almost three weeks. Where did the time go? People are wondering why the lapse of posts and the one word explanation is, vacation. We left for Rock Springs, Wyoming on the 29th of July and returned home on August 12th. Two weeks of sleeping in motel rooms, eating motel breakfasts, roughly 913 miles each way, made us grateful to come home to our beds and routines.