Talk about a dream family history center! We had a great virtual tour this week of the Midwest Genealogy Center which is the largest public genealogy library in the US. It is a fantastic resource for those people who travel to Missouri or who live in the area where they can get a public library card as it is part of the Mid-Continent Public Library System. But what about for us in Washington State. It can benefit us, too.

Here is my suggestion. Go to Midwest Genealogy Center | Mid-Continent Public Library at www.mymcpl.org/genealogy and explore. There are services that you can take part in that are free on a guest pass from your home. Including classes, webinars and consultations. They have programs for kids, free forms you can download, and oral history projects/memory lab just to name a few. They also are part of the interlibrary exchange program so you can check things out from your local library that may be located in Missouri. There is way too much for me to describe and you would be better off looking at their own information.  They also have programs on YouTube. Watch for the name Iveta who has many programs that she hosts including special interest groups for German and several others. She did our tour and was great.

Oh, and by the by, the resources they have are for the entire US, not just Missouri.

Our next class is “What is Your Name?” and will discuss naming patterns. I am looking forward to seeing what light it sheds on my family names. As you are quite aware, as we go further back in generations, we have more and more surnames to contend with. So, I am just focusing my thinking on the big four, for the most part – Hartzell, Ostrander, Vance, and Kingsley. I may throw in a few others that I have found something about such as Reneau (Reno), Brandenburg, and Faris or that I have found little about such as Pennybaker, Arnold, or Beck. I know, far too many to really say I am focusing. Shake your fingers at me and tell me to read my own blog!

That is my biggest problem I believe. The difference between what I should do and what I want to do. I am hoping that with greater knowledge from this class I can determine the next step. As we have discussed in this blog before, for me it is about going deeper rather than collecting more names. The other side to that concept is that I have always been curious about where the family came from as far as from where across the ocean. I have the DNA done which points me in a general direction, but my family has been in America for the most part, since before the US became the US. I think this is why I keep resisting the deeper rather than wider concept. I just want that one or two proven pieces that say we came from Germany or from France, etc. Boats, Immigration records, Naturalization, etc!

I have started a To Do list and a different list of questions that come up as I research so that I can stay on topic with the research but not forget the thinking that is generated. Then I take a day to just go through the lists and try to answer or complete some.  At least that is the plan!  We will see how that works.

See you on Thursday March 5th for “What is Your Name?”

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.org