Family

Today, I had the opportunity of working on my family history. I had sent an email last night to a cousin in Vancouver asking about some information that he might have. Well, Jim answered the email and sent me information as well as an obituary about the person that I was asking about.

I sorted through the information and was able to make sense of most of it. After I had entered it into my tree, some more information came to the surface. I use websites that have an automatic search function. This function does about 80% of the work when the information is on their website. This function can only sort through the information and records that the website has available. Not all information that is needed is on websites or is not yet digitized. It costs money to digitize records, but, fortunately, there are people that do the work needed.

Anyway, there was a bit of the information that he sent that did not fit easily into place. As it turned out, this information was on the tree of another cousin. This cousin lives in Rainy River, and we have been in touch previously. It just didn’t sink in which part of the tree was the one that she belonged to. I found out today.

We have just spent about an hour and a half, getting to know each other. I also took the time to sort out those hard-to-fit pieces of the puzzle and can now put it to bed (so to speak). I also asked for more information concerning the family and she was quite happy to give me the information. I found out that she is about a year and a half older than me and that her brother is about three quarters of a year older than me as well.

We plan to stay in touch as we are family, albeit distant family. My husband has been told that if we were to travel west in Canada, we will be stopping to visit.

I have found that when you research your family history, you have a marvelous opportunity to meet family members that have drifted away. This drift is not always intended and, sometimes, you think that there are not many members of the family.

Family history will help you to discover your living family as well as those who have gone on before you. It helps you to rebuild the ties that should never have been severed. It can make your family stronger. Once you discover how large your family actually is, and you may never know the full extent of the family, it’s up to you what you do with the information. It can be a very joyous trip.

On the other hand, you might dig up some information that some members of the family do not appreciate. Just remember, your ancestors were people too. They made their mistakes just as we make our mistakes. Life can be very rewarding even with the mistakes that are made. After enough time, we should be able to look back and say, “Yes, I made a mistake, and it was a bad one. But I learned from it.” Or “Yes, I made a mistake, and I thought that it was a bad one, but I survived and am trying to do better.”

Live life. Love your family. Look for the missing members of the family that should be there. Work together. Have fun. Support one another. If you don’t have your family, you don’t have one of the most important things in life.

Day Fourteen – Field Trip, April 2016

As another early morning got underway, we had a fairly long ride to our destination. Unfortunately, I was a bit under the weather this morning due to a medical condition and slept for the first 90 minutes. I felt somewhat better at the first stop and was able to enjoy the rest of the day.

Today, we visited the Dingle Peninsula. The bus driver made a point of making a large number of stops for photo opportunities. The scenery is fantastic. I have not been to any other part of the world that has this type of scenery. We were taken to see where the new Star Wars movie will be filmed and where “Ryan’s Daughter” was filmed. I happened to say that it’s too bad that we couldn’t actually visit the location for the Star Wars movie and was told that security is already in place for it. We were able to see the island where the final scene for the last Star Wars movie was filmed.

As we travelled we were able to see a large number of famine houses. These are ruins of houses from the time of the Great Famine where either the family starved to death or left to go to Canada and the United States because of lack of food. We are talking about 1 million people who died and another million who left the country.

We passed through a number of small fishing villages and stopped in Dingle for lunch. There, I took the opportunity of shopping for souvenirs for my grandchildren and also found a bodrahn for myself. The store that I found them in had a really good sale on. I think that there was 50% off on everything in the store. If I had paid full price, I would have spent €112 but I only paid €56. I was very happy about this. I still have a bit more shopping to do, but at least this much is done.

This evening, I will be attending a show that also features Irish dancing. I am looking forward to the entertainment this evening.

Day One Of Field Trip April 2016

Today was my first day of travel. Before I could travel, I had to do a number of things that took me most of the day.

In order to pack for my trip, I wanted to do my laundry today so that I would have the maximum amount of clothing to choose from. Because of the time of year, I chose to bring both some lighter winter clothing and some spring/summer clothing. I had completed my laundry, folded my clothing, and took out what was not going. I had been thinking about taking my medium-sized suitcase. I even got it out and started to put a couple of things in. I looked at what I was bring and decided that there was no way that I would be able to put everything into my suitcase that I needed/wanted. So…. I pulled out the big suitcase. I will be gone for just over two weeks and I am bringing enough clothing that if I can’t get a load of laundry done, I have enough clothing except for underwear. I can wash out some underwear in the bathroom sink if need be.

I also didn’t get a chance to print some business cards yesterday. I set that up to print while I was trying to complete something else.

Before I was able to have the time to pack, I had a couple of medical appointments this morning. So, I was able to manage to get the laundry into the wash machine early enough that I was able to put the clothes into the dryer before I left for my appointments. A couple of months ago, my doctor had a blood test done for cholesterol and put me on some medication. Today, we were reviewing the results of a blood test that was done earlier this week. He was very happy with the results and is letting me go without the medication until I come home again. I just have to watch what I eat.

Every time I tried to complete a task so that I could get everything completed by the time my husband came home, something else came up. I almost forgot the books that I make annotations in regarding records that I find. I don’t know how many times I reopened my suitcase to add something more. I had to print off some flyers and invitations to a family history fireside chat in May.

Finally, I was able to pack my laptop and remembered that I should take a spare pair of glasses. I found about three pair that I can use as a spare pair. I almost forgot where the suitcase locks were. Finally, I was packed and I didn’t think that I had anything more that had to go in. I can just lift my suitcase to put it into the back of our vehicle. Fortunately, there will be a few things that won’t be coming back.

As most family historians know, when you visit an archive, you can get excellent service if you give them a little gift, preferably something from your part of the world. As most people that are going on this trip are from the Ottawa area, they are bringing souvenirs of Canada. I decided that I had to be different. I am the only person from Newfoundland going on this trip that I am aware of. So, about a month ago, I went looking. Do you realize how hard it is to find souvenirs when it is not tourist season? Well, I managed to find six shot glasses, three of each of two different designs, small Newfoundland flags, some large chocolate bars, and, we just happen to have a number of pins representation of the Canadian Army. I can only hope that these will work their magic for me and get me the help I need to find certain records.

By 5 pm, I had everything into the vehicle, my husband had changed and we opted to stop along the way at a Timmies for some supper. I just happen to have some gift cards for Timmies that we hadn’t used yet and we didn’t have to pay any money.

So, now, I am ready to crash to get some sleep before getting on a plane tomorrow morning to travel from St John’s, Newfoundland to Toronto, to meet my brother and most of the other members of our group going on our expedition.