WOOHOO! I get to visit the Mother Ship!

So reprehensor wants to go to some 9/11 lecture that's up in Salt Lake City this Wednesday, and last month he actually asked me "Is there anything you can do up in Salt Lake City?"

"Honey," I said, "I'm a GENEALOGIST! Hellooooooo..."
"Oh yeah..." he says. :think:

It's only for 2 1/2 days, but I've made a thorough research journal of all the book call numbers and microfilm numbers of the stuff I need to look up.

Unfortunately, they are sparse on Rock County, Wisconsin info, but they have plenty in Racine county, and there are two pesky folks I'm looking for there. So hopefully I'll get lucky.

:thumbsup:

I have such a long list of films now that I swear it would make more sense to go to SLC for a few days than order them through the local FHCs (small, open two days a week, not convenient, etc.)

I found THREE major "Aha!"s that have helped me clear up some confusion.

1. Smith daughter #2, Nancy, married three times. We had never been able to find her last marriage. I always figured it occurred around Rock Co., WI somewhere, but I had this piece of information that her husband was from Waupaca. Guess what? I searched the marriage records for Waupaca County in 1870, and there they were!

2. Smith daughter Mary Elizabeth married a Roberts. She in turn had a daughter, also named Mary Elizabeth.

Now comes the fun part. Mary Elizabeth Roberts married a SMITH. I searched the Racine County marriages, and found her marriage to James Smith. She and James had a son, Walter, and I may have found his birth, but the child wasn't named, so I'll have to look a little further.

3. A book called "Our Page" about PAge County, North Dakota, had some biographical sketches of several of the folks I was looking for and brought me forward to the modern day.

So YES, very successful visit! I know how you feel about the FHL Ceneters. I would never have found the Nancy fact because I just looked spur of the moment. If it came down to the choice of which films to order, I have so many others I need that I probably wouldn't have done it.

I just got a job last Wednesday, so have had to work on mortgage documentation, but a great perq is that HQ is out in San Jose, so when I travel out on the 27th, I'm staying over a weekend and flying back out of Sacramento to do some research there.

And reprehensor and I are heading to Alberta in May. I found out the folks I was looking for belonged to the High River Rotary Club, so e-mailed the guy in charge, and he forwarded my message. Ihave a whole new mess of cousins to meet while we're up! Woo hoo!

How's your research coming, Gormy?
fsc :hi:

I have a grand aunt who started me on genealogy when I was a kid but we focused on one line (came over early 17th century and stayed in New England so there are mountains of data on them.) Recently she suggested that since she's getting on in years we should try the other side with the Irish roots. Oy! what a different story. I've come to the conclusion that all Irish men are named John or Patrick or Martin and all the women are named Mary or Margaret or Bridget. :+ Add to that the common surnames and it's a struggle to sort them out in the American communities, never mind across the pond. Without the aunt's sharp memory I'd have no clue how to sort it out.

I steered you to the Sacramento state library in an earlier posting because you had asked about driving up there but you should also know that there's a great branch in San Francisco, the Sutro library, should you ever be sent out to San Jose again.

http://www.lib.state.ca.us/

I went to Sutro recently to slog through city directories looking for these Irish. I made significant progress, seeing connections that I never would have guessed based on the census data and developing new leads for searches in the naturalization data. I loved to 'explore' when I'm at a library too. Sometimes you don't know what you should be looking for but a title jumps off the shelf when you're browsing.

On edit: you DID have a good trip! Maybe I should book that trip to SLC...

Make a research journal before you leave (if you have Family Tree Maker, it has that feature).

No matter where I go, I always make a list of all the possible facts I want to look up there, their location, date, and any other pertinent data.

Then, go here: www.familysearch.org and check all the library materials if you haven't. (I'd give you the exact link, but their server is down)

If you go to the Location Search, that's been the most helpful for me. You can check and see all the records that are available for a particular place. Such as

Place: Clinton, Part of Wisconsin

Then when you find the records you want, and get film details, take down the film numbers and book call numbers, and you'll be ahead of the game before you go.

I also checked on their Website and got a map of the building so I knew where everything was before I got there. That way, I was able to walk right in, pinpoint what I wanted, and find 2 very important items in the afternoon, when we had barely even checked into the hotel!

Your Irish folks sound like my mother's French Canadian side. Everyone in Quebec was named after the two patron saints of the place, so almost all the kids in the one branch during the 1600s were either Jean Baptiste or Marie Madeleine something!

I'd love to get to Sutro. It looks great! But I found out the other day that the cousin I wanted to visit in Sacto just lost her husband at the end of January, so I'll be making short work of the Sacto library.

As for future trips, we'll have to see!
fsc

Complete with 'dit' names. Hard to wrap your head around that one. In the first American generation the males adopted the dit name as the surname, but the females are listed in municipal and Catholic church records by their proper surname. Thankfully one priest has made it his life's work to document the F/C families in Maine and he listed them under both names in his work.

In case you didn't pick up on it, that link that I referenced covers both Sutro and the main branch in Sacto. If you find an interesting title, look in the detail record. If the location says anything other than Sutro, it's in Sacramento.

The familysearch site has been down frequently in the past month. I wonder if they're doing a major upgrade. I've been trying to mine the IGI British Isles index for the Irish. I found baptismal records listed for some of the males but none for their sisters. Argh!

I'll see what I can find. Mostly what I"m going to need in Sacto are newspapers for finding obits and marriages-- that sort of thing. I'm trying to find as many dates as I can before I leave.

You know what I think?

On of my other cousins told me they are starting to digitize all the records in Salt Lake City. I'm wondering if perhaps they're doing some upgrading to the servers in prep for that.

Wouldn't THAT be awesome? She says she doesn't think it would be completed in her lifetime, but might in mine.

fsc

I was wondering the same thing. If they just digitized the U.S. vital records it would be a great step forward.

Have a great trip. It's nice to combine family visits with family research (or at least that's what SOME of us think.;) )

The dit names are quite a challenge, but I've managed to find hundreds of ancestors in spite of it. My most extreme example are the descendents of Paul Hus who came to New France in the 1600's. I'm descended from three of his children, one whose last name remained either Hus or PaulHus, one whose last name became Millet through Hus-dit-Millet and the third whose name became Cournoyer through Hus-dit-Cournoyer.

It is definitely a wild ride in Canada but well worth the effort. I've had much more success there with published church records and genealogical dictionaries than I've had with the variety of sources in this country.

and lived in a Francophonic community (Lewiston)so they went to a French-speaking church where the priests understood and recorded the dit names. This was in the 1860s. I suspect that the surname changed before they left Quebec because it's Carignan, which is more commonly a dit name. I haven't had much luck with the standard references like Tanguay and Drouin yet. I know that once I find the immigrant pair in the Canadian records I should be able to find whole New France ancestry.

It's amazing how fast you can find your way back to 1590 if you can just find that first couple.

Do you know the history of Carignan? It was the name of a regiment of soldiers who came to fight the Mohawk in 1665. Many of the soldiers stayed and were offered incentives to do so. You can probably google Carignan Regiment and find a fair amount of information. I looked it up in a Canadian encyclopedia and found a full page of information.

If Carignan was a dit name in your family, your original ancestor of that line was probably a Carignan soldier. I have several ancestors myself who were soldiers in that regiment though none with a "dit Carignan" name.

Don't ya just love family history!

I read about that with great interest. Carignan is the surname in my line, the dit name is unusual enough that I should find them in Tanguay with ease I but I don't. Odder still is that the records at the Catholic church in Maine are very thorough but there is no mention of the parents of either the immigrant male or female. It's as if they were dropped by aliens. I don't call them a brick wall yet because I'm still looking for new angles. At least I have sufficient knowledge of the language to muddle through the records. I do suspect that the Carignans were originally something else and Carignan was their dit name while still in Quebec.

Family history is like solving a million piece jigsaw puzzle with a few of the pieces missing!

one of the founders of Racine, IIRC. Maybe Waterford? I think there is a Levi Barnes Ave in Racine.

Yes, this is a recent discovery of mine, that we had any cousins there. They settled there for awhile, then moved up to Wausau.

Somewhere along the line, Mary Elizabeth (Roberts) Smith died, I think. Her son lived with his grandparents in Wausau for most of his life, but he died very young from TB.

I still have some digging to do on that line to find her.

Unfortunately, don't think any of them lived on Levi's namesake street. :D