A Little Spring Cleaning Detour

 

There is a little wood and wicker three drawer cabinet which I've repurposed to store some of my research odds and ends—you know, the notes-to-self reminders that I'll do when I get a "round tuit." Evidently, I must have recently added one file folder too many, because yesterday, it began creaking. Not long afterwards, I noticed this cabinet was doing its best to imitate the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There are many instances in which history is worthy of emulation but this was not one of them. It was time to investigate.

Among all those notes-to-self in those filled drawers, I rediscovered some records gleaned from on-site research in places that ancestors used to call home. I found records from the Fort Meade Historical Society, from the little town in Florida where my McClellan ancestors once lived, and remembered our family's visit to their museum, which displayed a dentist's chair once used by my great-grandfather. From another long-distance genealogy trip, I rediscovered a map of the Roman Catholic parish in Ireland now known as Ballina-Boher, with the townland of Tountinna highlighted in yellow to draw attention to the place where my father-in-law's Tully ancestors once lived.

There were, of course, many other slips of paper, reminding me to check on specific details of this or that ancestor. From some of my earliest research forays, there were actual photocopies of documents, items which I'll now need to scan and upload to my digitized records.

Fortunately, several of these reminders have made a timely appearance, for I've already planned to work on these family lines in upcoming months. For those notes regarding my mother's family, this is a great prompt to add those maternal ancestors to my Twelve Most Wanted list for next year. There is always more work to do on these brick wall ancestors.

Organized into groups of similar tasks, these odds and ends of notes written to myself in past years are now laid out into a work flow that will hopefully vanquish the paper piles, but at the same time, looking at each one and remembering what first sparked those reminders has been a pleasant trip down my genealogical memory lane. Research may seem tedious at times—and provide me with motivation to move on to the next task when the frustration of dead ends looms—but it is always enjoyable to look back and remember the trip from beginning puzzle to latest stopping point. Somehow, a little spring cleaning detour turns out to provide me with more energy to pick up that trail once again. 

A New Month, an Old Research Puzzle

 

For the past six years, I've made it my habit to slice and dice through the brick walls of four family trees—my maternal and paternal lines, and those of my in-laws—using a system I call my Twelve Most Wanted. For each of the first three months of the year, I select one frustratingly elusive family member of the bygone generations in my mother's line to focus on per month. For the subsequent quarter, I then move to three brick wall ancestors from my mother-in-law's family tree. The second half of each year is dedicated to the fathers: in the fall, my attention turns to my father-in-law's Irish heritage, and come wintertime, I wrestle with those hard-to-find Polish records on behalf of my own father.

One ancestor to focus on each month sometimes means great research progress. Other times, it means I need to fold up the dossier despite the unanswered questions. Come the end of the month, that can be a difficult choice to make. The only consolation is in writing up a to-do list for the next time I pick up the challenge in a new year.

So it is with this month's challenge, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother Lydia Miller who, at a young age, became the widow of William Gordon in Perry County, Ohio. While in many cases, I return to a previous Twelve Most Wanted's candidate only years afterwards, the last time I worked on Lydia, I could barely bring myself to close the case on her—even temporarily. It was exactly eleven months ago when I needed to make that choice; I could hardly get back to her story fast enough.

The main reason I've been so keen to return to Lydia's story is that, at nearly the close of the month last year, I made a breakthrough discovery—but ran out of time to fully explore the possibilities that that discovery introduced. With to-do list in hand from the end of the month's report last May, this month we'll return to (hopefully) learn the rest of Lydia Miller's story.