Wisdom Wednesday: Research

I have found many different religions while searching through my family history.

I am Methodist and my mom was raised Baptist and I have many family members who have been raised Catholic, Lutheran, Mormon, Presbyterian. 

One thing for certain I have found all my ancestors that I am aware of were Christians. 

I am a research nut. Which means on any given day while doing genealogy I will find something I just have to research. It could be an occupation, or a place or a Bible Box. Whatever it may be I always seem to lose track of time researching deeper. I just want to know how they lived each day of their lives.

I have an Amick ancestor who was given a letter and a sword for his service in the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln. A relative donated it to a museum and unfortunately in this little story nobody mentions where this museum is except in Iowa.

So I spent a better part of a day looking for all the museums in Iowa and sending emails. I came up empty. I need that guy from that show Mystery at the Museum to help me.

Then there's a story of my Great Aunt Dessie Robertson who married Dana Wyman Warren. In the family genealogy there's a note that he died in a great flood in St. Louis and his body was never found. So I again search the internet for many hours and I found he ran off with another women and Dessie sued this women for $2,000 it went all the way to the Supreme Court. I sure hope she got every penny. Dana was a local photographer at the time in Hull, IA.

As I was searching for information on Dana Warren I found a very interesting story about his son who left his pregnant wife to go to St. Paul MN with a couple friend and they went on a robbery spree and it landed him in Stillwater Prison.

I was doing research again on my dad's biological side (he was adopted) and found out that he's related to Samuel Reber a Mormon who had 23 children. I just had to call my mom and tell her this because my dad thinks all women should be barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen. Ha Ha..Mom got a good laugh.

I have also found many treasures doing research. I found a family website that had 100's of photo's and documents. I jumped up and down!!! It took me months to go through it all and add it to my Family Tree Maker program.

The point is use google or whatever search engine you use and try different ways of woding things and alway click on images because they can take you to web pages that might be a gold mine. 

That reminds me I have had several ancestors and 2 uncles who had gold mines.

Sometimes you can even find biographies of a person and learn even more about your family.

Sometimes when I get stuck I will go back to my grandparents and work on their children or my great grandparents children. You can never know or have too much on an ancestor.

I love to read the city directories and their wills there's lots of info there.

Have you ever tried to use google maps and put your ancestor's address in and look at their house. I think they should perfect it some so you can save the image. But I think it's cool.

I also like to search club and organizations my ancestors were members of. I found this card that belonged to my grandfather and had no idea what it was.

My research found on website on them and they are still active now how awesome is that??

Also whenever I find a ancestor who has traveled I have to look up the name of ship and attach photo's of it. Sometimes you get lucky and find a whole you tube video.

So never give up just use a different avenue.

Use the other side of your brain.

And happy treasure hunting.