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15 October 2010

Hurray! It wasn't murder!

Only attempted murder.

I found a more local (up the road a ways in the same county) newspaper account of my several times great grandfather's double murder. Turns out, he only wounded the other guy - who lived for about 3 more years. My ancestor was still followed and killed by friends or relatives of the victim.

Now, I REALLY want the account from the local newspaper.

20 July 2010

What DID happen in the meantime?

My aunt called to ask for some help with some research. She gave me two different problems from two different branches of her family. One was fairly easy. The other, I'm still struggling to find out anything beyond what she has given me.

She said that some of these lines, especially the hard to find one, has records once you go back far enough. Not only are the records there but they are in excellent condition and contain tons of information. Then there is a black hole in information available. Then the records pick up again. So what happened in the meantime?

Some of the standard answers are:
  • Fire
  • Flood
  • War
  • Ran away from home and changed names
  • Adopted when parents died/ran off/couldn't afford to keep them
  • Moved to frontier
And the most popular of all:
  • Poor record keeping all around for whatever reason.
I wonder what the answer will be this time? 

07 February 2010

Indexing

Why does it take something like getting the stomach bug to get me to start indexing again? I think it is overload. I end up being so tired after work that doing any more family history work, even for myself, is too much.

But I finally did it. I did some FamilySearch Indexing today: The Rhode Island state census and some burial records from England. It felt so satisfying to finish them.