Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Just when I thought I'd seen it all

I seem to have found myself in a vicious circle lately. I think it began with my research on my cousin Jimmy's Pushard ancestors. I kept finding things - newspaper articles on different branches of my family, marriage licenses for a lot of my Montana relatives, a whole set of documents and pictures on my Craddock side, the stack of church records on the Josephs in Manitoba, and then more and more photos from my great-grandmother Rosie (Sitzman) Wagner. All of these things have been piling up in my "stuff to file" folder. I haven't had the proper time to go through much of these yet, but I can't seem to stop myself from going after more. You start getting some line, you keep tugging till it runs out, right?

Well, this weekend I was completely cut off from my genealogy research, attending the wedding of my wife's best friend Autumn out in Spokane. I felt badly that I was missing my dad's birthday (especially as they went out for steak Saturday night). My grandparents came down to help celebrate, and they brought a little something with them. My grandma has been talking to her brother, Uncle Howie, and he gave her a couple of old manila envelopes with some documents she hadn't seen before. One envelope contained 28 old postcards addressed to my great-grandparents from various relatives - Charlie's mom and dad (who divorced, and so sent their postcards separately), cousins, siblings, and some from friends. The other envelope had some old legal papers - mostly deeds to property my great-grandparents owned in different places, though there is also a stock certificate for one share in the Monroe Memorial Park, Inc. (Who knew cemeteries sold stock?) So now, on top of all the other papers I have to go through, now I have 28 postcards and several deeds and a stock certificate to look at. I'm not really complaining, I'm actually ecstatic at all the family info that's been coming to light these last few weeks. I just don't know how in the world I'm going to get through all of this, organize it, and note it in my database.

I suppose there are worse problems to have though, hm?

2 comments:

Susan Clark said...

Had to grin reading this since I'm sharing my home with boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff from various kinfolk. You do know these things aren't going to vanish? As long as your home is standing they'll wait patiently for you to get to them. I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing them as you do sort through it all!

Unknown said...

Lucky guy! You will do a little at a time until you get through it all. Oh, and you'll share it with me, I mean us, on your blog!