More About Ancestral Addresses

 

It's always nice to get a shout out from another genealogy blogger, and that's exactly what happened this weekend. Gail Dever of Genealogy à la Carte included my post about ancestral locations, "Measuring the Distances," in her weekly blog roundup. 

The added bonus was that right below the mention of my blog was a selection from another publication which expanded on the theme of my own post. Writing for the Genealogical Society of Queensland, Andrew Redfern explained, "Why Addresses Matter in Family History."

Featured toward the top of the article was a photograph of an item my grandmother used to call a "little black book." Just like the author of that blog post has described, my own grandmother kept one of her own—and now I have it. It is indeed, as Andrew Redfern put it, a family heirloom.

More than just describing the contents of that diminutive directory, the GSQ article goes on to explain all the ways addresses can help lead to revealing hints about those brick wall ancestors. The author challenges all of us to draw up an address history of our own lives as a keepsake to pass down through the generations.

I couldn't agree more. My grandmother's little address record was a valuable guide in my own family history research—even those little offhand notes and tidbits she filed within the pages of the book. Between that and those other "scraps" of paper that members of previous generations used to save—how odd that we now only see them as "hoarders" of such treasures—we sometimes discover answers to the questions which could not have been found any other way.