Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Cemetery Folder


Cemetery Folder
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel
From now on all my "gravestone hopping" adventures will begin with a plan that I have been developing for the last two years. It is working...

Of course, all investigations begin with research. This research is a little different because it is my husband's family that provided the original information. Apparently, my family kept good records and told the truth. My husband's? Not so much. Lots of the information was riddled with misconceptions. But, that's a story for later. For now, let's focus on what was right.

My father-in-law, who is 97 years old and an educated man showed me this pedigree charts after I had been married 5 years or so. Keep in mind that for some time, I was the only daughter-in-law he had who was born in America and who was educated. He knew I did family history because he helped me by giving me a piece of blueprint paper to make my own family's drop down chart on.

He must have received this chart (and some family group sheets) from family who lived near where I am living now. He was reluctant to let me borrow them to copy them but his son, my husband, talked him into it. We got them copied and mailed them right back to him. He still did not trust me with his papers. Later, he let me borrow two original marriage certificates to copy. We still have not found those originals in his papers. He should have trusted me. I would have them instead of just copies. [Arghhh...]

When the LDS Web site went live, it was my husband's chart I pulled out and took with me to the place I was working which had a T1 line, which at the time was faster than the dial up I was using at home. I waited a couple weeks after the initial event as I knew they would be overloaded with people.

In the space of two hours before teaching my class, I had pulled up IGI records on most of the people in this chart. But, it wasn't until I subscribed to Ancestry.com and NEHGS, that I could actually find any proof that this was correct. I slowly have been adding data to my tree there and trying to see if it would be possible to find some graveyards where these folks might be buried. We visited one cemetery and we were disappointed not to find his grandparents and great grandparents who are buried there.

But, we did find out that his 2nd and 3rd great grandparents are buried not a ten minute drive to our new house. So, for the past two weeks, I have been working on preparing for a cemetery visit.

It is getting colder and it is rainy and we knew our time might be cut short so I sped up my research a bit.

To be continued.....

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