Moving Across Country Or A Great Excuse To Do Genealogy Research

Submitted by HOST GFS Sam@aol.com

 

As many of you know, after four years in Washington state, I decided to moved clear across the country to New England this summer. A vast majority of my early ancestors were from this area and, and since I'd only been able to get to New England ONCE in 30 years of researching, I decided the only way to accomplish some hands-on digging was to go live there. : )

So I quit my job, sold my car, rented a 10' truck and loaded up my stuff, the 2 dogs and cats and off we trekked - with no job or place to live on the other end then lined up, mind you. Scary, huh? Well, to make the venture less frightening, I decided to turn the trip into a genealogical one.

First stop was Boise, Idaho, where I met my WILLIAMS cousin, Susan MORTENSEN in person for the first time. I'd met her on-line last year when, after nearly three decades, I cracked open this particular line. WILLIAMS is my mom's maiden name and the furthest back I'd been able to get had been my great grandfather. Susan not only confirmed that my great, great grandfather was indeed the missing link (and a brother to her ancestor), but the information she gave me helped me trace my new great, great grandMOTHER all the way back to Nantucket, MA in the 1600's! Now Susan had told me back then that she had once had a photograph of my 2nd great grandparents, but that she didn't know what had happened to it. When she visited me at the motel in Boise, she brought along several albums to show me and, lo and behold, the missing photo of my 2nd great grandparents popped up in one of them - the first time, of course, I'd ever seen a picture of them. (Needless to say, I had a copy of the picture waiting for me by the time I arrived in New England.)

Next stop was Coalville, Utah, where I met my HINEY 2nd cousin for the first time. (Yeah, I know - go ahead and giggle. HINEY is the "butt" of many jokes, even among those of us descended from this line.) My HINEY cuz and his wife loaded me up with photos of their branch of the tree (i.e., my great, great aunt and all her kids) as well as family group sheets of their more immediate family.

In Colorado, I met cuzzie HOST GFS Carol for the first time and spent the night at her place. Then it was on to Dallas County, Iowa, home of my mother's ancestors, where I spent two days. Jeannie Roland, another on-line cuzzie, graciously chauffeured me around to five different cemeteries so that I could take pictures of the graves of my grandparents, 2 sets of great grandparents, my HINEY great, great grandparents, and even a 3rd great grandfather, not to mention scads of great uncles, aunts and loads of cousins. I also visited my 104 yr. old great aunt in Des Moines who was actually able to help identify some of the folks in the pictures my HINEY cousins in Utah had given me! (She couldn't tell you what she had for breakfast that day, but she could remember things that happened 60 years ago.)

From Iowa I made a slight, but important, detour north to Madison, Wisconsin, where I ended up spending three days with my Aunt Carol, the other genealogist in the family. I'm the one who got HER hooked on research back in the early '70s, which, for the most part, has worked out well, as she worked on my dad's side of the family, allowing me to concentrate on my mother's side. However, I knew Aunt Carol had been hoarding things, especially pictures. Now I had photos of my direct paternal ancestors, but did not have any of their siblings. Aunt Carol dragged out a ton of photos - some in albums, but most in drawers or on closet shelves. (Yes, I berated her about getting organized.) She has HUNDREDS of ORIGINAL photos and I ended up leaving there with 130+ copies of pictures I had never seen before. (If I hadn't been on a moving budget, I certainly would've come away with more, so obviously another trip is in order.) While every picture is a treasure, the prize was the tintype showing my great, great grandfather, Julius Porter WAITE in his Union Army uniform, posing with several men of his regiment during the Civil War.

Aunt Carol also took me to the Wisconsin State Library, which has a very large genealogy collection, and, of course, I left there with a stack of copies from several publications I found.

It will come as no surprise to you when I report that by this time, I had had to buy an accordian file just to lug around everything I had managed to accumulate on the trip. When I arrived in Connecticut (where I dumped the rental truck, bought a car and spent two weeks with GFA Beth), my forwarded mail produced a huge package from my BRYANT cousin (my grandmother's first cousin, to be precise), full of yet another stack of photos I'd never seen before, many with my mother as a young girl in them as well as my grandparents, etc.
So, was my summer productive? You bet it was! And now that I'm gainfully employed and have a roof over my head here in Massachusetts, I'm gearing up for more this fall. : )

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