Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Sidetracked

On Sunday I went to the annual meeting of the local Historical Society. They were presenting a program on genealogy, and my boss Gretchen was going to explain some software newly available through the library. I thought I had better get the low down in case folks came with questions during my shifts. (I could have had her show me separately, but since we are both pretty busy it made sense to just attend the meeting). The main presenter gave a good talk about how to get started, with helpful handouts.


I've never done genealogical research, or had any pressing urge to take it up, but when I mentioned to my Mom that I would be attending she said "Oh, I would really like to know more about my mother's family".

So when I got home from the presentation I started noodling around (and quickly realized why people can spend years at it - it's a slow process with lots of dead ends). By Monday, I had come up with my maternal great-grandmother's name. On a whim, I Googled it. Almost nothing came up, but there was a post on a message board, from 2007, with a bit of information and a note that the poster had a photo including "Abby". Abby is my grandmother. I posted back, and received a gracious reply and this:
That's my grandmother on the right. Now really, how cool is that?

5 comments:

Annie Pazoo said...

I've never had a great urge to do the research either. Guess since others have done the written histories on both Mom's and Dad's paternal lines). But, oh wow, this is so neat! Maybe I'm trying too hard, but I see family resemblance (I'm seeing Ted, Teddy and Rick in her)!

Molly Bee said...

That is so COOL! What a lovely picture!

magnusmog said...

Tracing your family can be really addictive - both my parents and my partner have been working on family trees. The photo is wonderful:)

btw - if you ever discover any Scottish relatives I could check them out for you !

Gayle said...

Check out familysearch.org The LDS church has done a tremendous amount of work putting records online for free. It is amazing. My daughter found a family member who came across on the Mayflower. It does get addicting

SSK* said...

I'm lucky enough to have had relatives do this up until the last couple of generations, then my kids had to do geneology projects in jr high for the last 2-3 generations, so I haven't had to do any of the work.

I believe I now own every needlework artifact from our family. As generations die off, they've tried to make sure that heirlooms go to descendants with similar traits. I have some pretty cool stuff.