Traveling Time

No, I will not be in Phoenix by the time you get to read this, but I will be on my way to Chicago. A little visit with relatives, a little drive to attend to business and conferences, and I’ll clear my calendar for a quick stop in Indianapolis and Lafayette, Indiana. I’m on a quest to uncover more details about my Stevens and Kelly lines.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ll be perusing the Tippecanoe County microfilm collection at the Indiana State Library, and that I’ll be on the lookout for my surnames in the collection at the Alameda McCollough Library. But saying it isn’t quite the same as doing it, and I can hardly wait. I love the thrill of the hunt.

I am not only hoping to come home with a treasure trove of genealogical finds, but I’m looking forward to bringing some treats with me to share with my hosts. My agenda in Chicago will be to spend some time with the reigning matriarch of the Stevens family there—and to show this aunt the family pictures on loan to me from another branch of the Tully family, the family related to her mother-in-law. We are hoping to collectively put our photo-tagging thinking caps on and make short order of identifying some mystery relatives from the early 1900s. I can’t bear to let these people’s faces go nameless.

As for my daily posts to A Family Tapestry, I hope to make brief entries on each day’s progress, and on some thoughts I’ll be sure to have on the way. I also may reach into some scribblings from my past and share some thoughts on family with you—thoughts I’ve posted in other places, though old, that bear some significance in this venue, also.

Traveling is always a welcome way to see things from a different perspective. Traveling for genealogical purposes not only takes in the here-and-now scenery, but brings us back in time as well as place. I am always in awe of coming in contact with tokens of my relatives’ lives, but whether that experience is replicated on this trip or not, I’m looking forward to the opportunity.