Friday, March 30, 2007

I practiced Geneaholism yesterday

Yesterday had all the marks of a great Geneaholic day. I was on the computer by 8 AM, read my email, read my politics web sites and genealogy news, and posted a note on Genea-Musings. I received three queries through the CVGS web page recently, and I worked on them for awhile.

My plan was to go to the Family History Center and read the microfilm that I ordered a month ago. I got there at about 10:15, and immediately realized that I had left my RI Probate notes at home. I decided to read the first three volumes of Westerly (RI) town records on the film anyway, which include probate records. I remembered that I was searching for Champlin and Kenyon probates, and reviewed my ahnentafel for the names and death dates. The original records have a lot of bleed through, cramped writing, and some blotches and dark pages. After an hour of scrolling through the film, I had identified the important pages and took the film to the microfilm scanner/printer. I scanned and saved 24 pages and copied them onto my flash drive for printing at home later. I ordered two films on the Bresee family and headed for home, eating my lunch (an apple and cookies) on the way.

When I got home, at 1 PM, I checked my email again, grabbed some baloney for lunch, and wrote a blog post about my concerns with FamilySearch Indexing. Then I remembered that Thursday at 1 PM is the time for Family Roots Radio, so I tuned in at about 1:30, just in time to hear the end of the Dick Eastman interview. I listened to the rest of Kory's program, then listened to the program from the week before, featuring Leland Meitzler. Afterwards, I blogged about that too.

While listening to the programs, I worked on finding Minerva. One of my colleagues at CVGS had talked about her Minerva --?-- problem, so I decided to see if I could find a Minerva, age 7, in Indiana in the 1860 census, with a father born PA and a mother born IN. There were 116 Minerva's, and I checked all of them for their parents birthplaces. There were 12 with the father born in PA, but only one of them had a mother born in IN. I'm not sure that Solomon and Juliet Dye are the right parents, but they might be.

My colleague had stated that Minerva (--?--) Crosby had died before 1930. I found her in the 1920 census in Riverside CA with her husband Thomas, so I checked the CA Death Index (at www.vitalsearch-ca.com) for 1905-1929 and found a record for Minerva Crosbie that was probably the right Minerva. I emailed my colleague with this find, which was new information for her, and suggested she obtain a death certificate - it might have Minerva's parents names on it. If not, then she should check her children's marriage and death records, and may be their Social Security applications, to see if her maiden name is listed.

Feeling pretty good about that, and since my wife had come home and wanted to check her email, I went in and read the rest of the newspaper while watching the news. We had dinner, and afterwards I came back to the computer after 6 PM and did a bit of research for a future post for April Fool's Day. Then it was time for Survivor Fiji and CSI, and I started my latest Catherine Coulter FBI novel. See, I do have some semblance of a life!

CSI was too gruesome, so I read the book, did the dishes, and checked my email, political news, and blog news one more time before going to bed at about 10:30.

Whew - about 10 hours of genealogy. Cool. That's pretty typical for me - I usually spend at least 6 to 8 hours each day doing something genealogy related, unless we are away from home. That will change soon when the Padres season starts and we either go to the games or watch them on TV.

Keen observers will recognize that I didn't really advance my own genealogy research during the day, except for copying the data at the FHC. I didn't enter any data into the computer, or search for information on the Internet. That's the main behavior that I need to change - do more to advance my own research in order to meet my goals for the year.

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