Between anniversaries, birthdays, and doggy “gotcha” days it has been busy here so not a lot of research being done. I did, however, take the opportunity to start a review project. I am going through each family group and looking at all the documents I have saved. My purpose is to read with care and see what I may have missed when I first saved them.

Why do this? As I have learned more about what I want to learn and what I might want to look for, I suddenly realize that I have more information than I thought I had. Sometimes I find my own mistakes, such as a set of parents for one GG parent that has 2 possibilities in one of the large databases and I am not sure either is correct. I found a document that lists his parents being born in Holland and England and that is not on either set of his potential parents’ information. But then the document I found was a census from a Veterans Hospital from 1905 when he was 89. Maybe that one has the wrong information.

On the more positive side, I found documents that list religions and occupations which are really the 2 things I am looking for right now. I am just trying to fill in some of the gaps that might help tell the story of what life was like for them on a regular basis. Turns out there are more Methodists in the family than we thought. On one I found the minister that officiated a wedding and researched him to find that he was a traveling minister in the area that did Methodist Revival Meetings. That was interesting.

Excuse me for a moment. I have to go work off some of the birthday cake. It turns out my 2-year-old grandson decided to live up to the “2 Year Old’s Reputation”. It must be an honor code for them.

Although I didn’t get my grandmother’s horticulture gene that turns out she got from her grandfather, I do love flowers and art and photographing flowers. As I was planting new photo subjects, I tried to connect with that gardening gene. It would be interesting to know what being a gardener vs a farmer was like in 1880. That is part of the social history that our next speaker will talk about.

I think about what life was like in the 1800s and I picture the old programs I remember from TV. Horses and buggies or wagons to get from place to place. Iceboxes rather than smart fridges that can tell you what you need from the store next trip. Women didn’t typically have careers, they were busy growing the food, cooking the meals, cleaning the house. No robotic vacuums for them!

I wonder if I have it correct? Finding some of the resources that describe church life, community involvement, occupations, customs and traditions, etc might clear up the memories of the “Little House on the Prairie vision I have and reality. I guess we will see after the next class!

Don’t forget about the other classes this summer: Research in Missouri, AI, Norwegians in America, Researching Germany, Finding Records in What We Have/Power of Clues and more after that.

See you soon!
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com