"I'm so glad you're here, Related-To-Everyone Man!"

"... just for a frame of reference," says Captain Obvious.

One of my fellow staff members at the Family History Center is a lovely retired gentleman who has such enthusiasm for family history, teaching, and people in general, that several patrons show up weekly to have him help them with their pursuits. We all enjoy working with him.

When I met him in November, we started comparing notes on our family trees - where our people come from, what famous people we're related to, the kinds of research we like. I discovered that Gene has an uncanny ability to track down living relatives in everyday places, like at church or in his neighborhood. Whenever he finds a new cousin, he tells us the next time we're together. I used to tease him that he's related to everybody.

Last Wednesday I joked, "We should see if you're related to me."

We plugged our jump drives into the same computer's USB ports, started up FamilyInsight (found in all FHCs, and available for purchase for home use), clicked on the command that would review both our databases and find matches, and...

We're related.

We share two sets of common ancestors: Philippe Cazier and Marie Taine (my paternal grandmother's line); and Jacob French and Susan Warren (my maternal grandmother's line).

Amazingly, my grandmothers are (so far) not related.

Yesterday, as we again looked through our respective data and found these ancestors, Gene excitedly scribbled down my information (this was before we both had the brilliant idea of creating GEDCOMS and copying and pasting them to each other's jump drives - he was that excited). He called me last night with his findings.

"We're ninth cousins, three times removed," he said.

I don't have much information on these people; I found them in the IGI, which is a great place to start but shouldn't be depended on for accurate information. Some submitters are meticulous record-keepers who can back up every fact; others, not so much. I'm motivated now to more deeply research these families and see what I can come up with.

Our ancestors come from the 16th and 17th centuries, so there's nothing obvious to distinguish us as relatives, but it's fun to work with him every week and to now have this added bond.

The same thing happened to my grandparents while they worked at their FHC in the Boise area - one of their fellow staff members shared a line with Gran. Then we discovered that this staff member's sister lives here and is in MY congregation. She and I keep saying we need to get together and compare notes, but it hasn't happened yet. I should get cracking.

It's always fun to find a new cousin.

Back at the FHC

After taking a year off, I am serving again at my local Family History Center.

It was on a whim that I happened to be put back on staff. Things have calmed down for us somewhat (I have two children with interesting medical issues). The hip-deep-in-timelines state of mind I was in propelled me to my FHC for something, I can't remember what - a book or a film, or something? I can't remember.

But I do remember that it was Veteran's Day and one of the FHC directors was serving his regular shift. He eyeballed me and said, "We need you to come back." I asked which shifts were needing help and he mentioned Wednesdays during the day. Before this school year, it would have been an impossibility, but now that my youngest is in school all day, I am free as a bird...

I started the next Wednesday and have been LOVING it. I love my fellow staff members and the opportunity to focus solely on my family history research - I didn't know how much I missed that part of it - and helping the patrons (when we have them). Today I helped a lady get started looking at some microfilms she had ordered from the Family History Library. She found good stuff today.

And SCORE! I also made significant finds. The Familysearch pilot site is so great!

That was my shift today - very, very satisfying. I'm so glad I have this opportunity.

It Never Rains, But It Pours.

For months we sat there at the FHC, working on our own family history because no patrons came in or needed anything. Tonight, the reprieve was over. Here's what I kept busy doing at the FHC tonight:

1) Helped a fellow staff member do a name on TempleReady

2) Helped a lady named Betty order microfiche (something I've done once in three years), learn how to download PAF to her home computer, and learn how to use it

3) While I was on the phone with the FHC director, making sure I did the microfiche order right, she asked me to make a sign for the door of the FHC saying that our day shift is closed tomorrow

4) Answered a phone call from a lady in my ward who said that the lady who was supposed to meet Otto at our place, showed up somewhere else and was all upset

Then I messed around with more new FamilySearch and match/merged more of my PAF people. I can't believe I forged together two files with over 15,000 people in them but yes, I was stupid.

We also discussed paranoid funeral home directors vs. awesome ones who can't help you enough. At one funeral home, my fellow staff members were accused of everything but digging up the body while trying to get funeral records for one of his relatives. The funeral home guy was convinced that "all they wanted was [the dead guy's] Social Security number."

This is just my opinion, but if you're going to be an identity thief, showing up at a funeral home and claiming to be a genealogist seems like a really hard, jump-through-hoopy, roundabout, stupid way to do it.

The night ended with a run to Wendy's.

So Close... and Yet So Far Away

I am dying here. Major, major frustration.

The Family History Center staff members in my area have been encouraged by our stake FHC directors to try to register for the new Familysearch.org. Other staff members have had success, so it's been exciting. I've been trying for weeks - entering the necessary information, clicking "Send" and hoping - only to be told that "New Familysearch.org is not available in my area." Well, yeah, or I'd be using it by now... *murmur murmur*...

Today, I received an email from support@familysearch.org. You know, the actual people who TELL you when new Familysearch is coming to your area. The people in charge. "In about four months, New Familysearch is coming to an Internet-connected computer near you," they announced. "Here's your material - get learning this stuff so you can teach it to others in your area," they instructed. "You should be able to register immediately upon receipt of this email," they joyfully expounded.

Cruel, cruel, cruel... this has turned out to be a fabrication.

I have emailed. I have called. I have been told to wait 72 hours. ROWRRRRRRR!!! *snarling*

It reminds me of the time I ordered that beautiful Wendy's salad, put it on my dashboard so I could stash something in my purse, and my husband took off uphill at lightning speed and my beautiful salad flew off the dashboard and spilled all over me, my clothes, my socks, my shoes and the floor of the car. I was heartbroken. "We can order you another one," he said.

I don't want another one!!!! I wanted this one! NOW!!!

On a completely different topic, I believe one of my missions here on earth might be... going out on a limb here... to learn patience.

For the uninitiated: New Familysearch is the Church's latest genealogical development - a way to consolidate all our family information in Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, the IGI, and myriad other databases that people have sent in over the years. We can squish our ancestors together so they're only in there once. We can do TempleReady FROM HOME (this is huge). We can communicate and solve problems with misinformation. I've been hearing about this for probably over a year. I've been looking forward to using it myself for months. I actually did get to use it at the FHC, using my stake FHC director's username and password (she let me). I'm absolutely beside myself that I still can't get to it. So there you have it - now you know what the big deal is.

OH BOY!!! Look what I just found!

Watch out, Ancestry.com... your days of monopolizing records and charging people up the yang for 'em are numbered.

Familysearch.org's Pilot Website is making some of its records available. I just found this German baptism record for some Steinhilber relatives (if you click on it: scroll down to Johannes Steinhilber - Johannes is my great-great-great grandfather).

As this great project keeps rolling right along, helped by thousands of volunteers like my friend and fellow FHC staff member, more and more of these records will become available for searching. Free.

If it's not happening fast enough for you, I'm sure you'd be willing to help out: they can tell you how to get started indexing these records.

*doing the Chris Farley "AWE!SOME!" thing*

Ordering Stuff From Salt Lake City

(You knew you could order stuff from SLC, right?)

New Cousin Bob and I were just discussing a book written by cousin Loretta Marvin, Steinhilber, which tells the story of our ancestors, Johannes Steinhilber and Johanna Magdelena "Lena" Roller of Germany. Lena joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormon) and, with her four daughters, sailed away on a Church ship to America "in the dead of night." She made it as far as Utah, where her fifth daughter was born, but left the area and settled in Nebraska. Johannes and their two sons were left behind in Germany, but later came to the United States themselves and settled in New York state.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for either group - and of course we don't know how things really went down, but the old-timers of their town gave this version as the way it went. The fact that she left under cover of darkness could mean anything. Perhaps Lena and Johannes were divided over the Church issue; perhaps they were divided over MANY issues and that's really why she left.

I have a copy of the book, and New Cousin Julie also has a copy, but Bob has never seen it. Is it online somewhere? was his question. I googled it, and found that some sweet soul donated a copy to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Which is good - it means I can keep my copy. Not only did they donate the book, they allowed it to be microfilmed, so anyone anywhere near a local Family History Center, like the one I serve in, can order the microfilm and see the book for themselves. I am beyond thrilled to think that something with my name in it is actually at the FHL, but thought, what if you're like Bob and don't know how to order it, or you don't have a wonderful cousin like me to tell you how to do it?

Here's a short synopsis:

1) Before you do anything else, search the Family History Library catalog. There are several criteria you can search under - places, surnames, titles, authors, subjects.

2) After finding something you're interested in, like a book about The Ackleys of New Jersey, find out whether it's a book or on microfilm or microfiche (a thin sheet of plastic on which information has been printed in tiny print - you use a different machine to look at it). If a book has been microfilmed, a gray button that says "View Film Notes" will appear at the top of the page.

3) If it's only in book form, congratulations! You're headed for Salt Lake! Have a great time and make sure you go to a MoTab concert and a Utes game and have lunch at the Pantry while you're there. Sadly, the Library and FHCs don't have an interlibrary loan situation, but if you're in the SLC area, you're welcome to spend dawn till dusk in the library itself. They even have vending machines if you get hungry.

4) If it's on microfilm or -fiche, put away those suitcases, and copy down the film or fiche number instead. You'll need it when you go to order it. In the Ackley book's case, the film number is 1597996, Item 22. Remember that, now.

5) Ordering microfilms and -fiches can only be done at a Family History Center. To find one near you, head here and fill in the country, state, county and city you live in. You'll be directed to the closest FHC, where you can go and order what you need. The staff are oh-so friendly and knowledgeable and LIVE for requests like this. Seriously. We get bored when we don't have patrons - we have to work on our own genealogy... it's such a drag.

6) Take the film number and item number with you, show up, fill out the order form, pay the $6 and wait about two weeks - then the microfilm will show up at your local FHC, you'll be contacted, and at your leisure, you'll be able to head down there and look at what you ordered. Hopefully there will be good, useful stuff in it. If not, you can always order something else, right?

If, by some major coincidence, you're also a Steinhilber descendant and you're interested in seeing the Steinhilber book, you can see its call number here and if you click "View Film Notes," you can get the film number and order it at your local FHC. It's worth the trouble.

Any questions? You can always leave me a comment.

The EVILS of CDs

A lady came into the FHC tonight with her genealogy burned on a compact disc. Her computer had crashed, but someone had fortunately managed to salvage her genealogy information and, not knowing she would want to use it in the future, burned it on this disc. Her thinking was, she could just pop it in one of our computers and start working again on her genealogy.

Every time I see a patron come in with a CD, I cringe. When people bring them in and expect to be able to add new data, correct old stuff, or change it in any way, they are sorely disappointed to find that their CD file is read-only. Burning genealogy on a CD is like taking a picture of it - you can look at it, but you can't undo or change what's already been done. You can't even use it to make a GEDCOM. If you have no other way of preserving your information, then go ahead, but just know that it will remain frozen in time, the way it is.

I tried six ways from Sunday to get that stinky little disc to cough up that information and let me save it somewhere else - the hard drive, the floppy disk, my email account - anywhere but on that CD. It wasn't budging. The poor lady was so sad and angry and frustrated, to think that 800 people on her file were now stuck on that CD. If she wanted to add anything new, they would have to be re-entered on her genealogy program, costing her years of work. My fellow staff member and I were just sick for her.

Knowing it was beyond my abilities, I called the King of All Geeks, my good friend Canadian Dan, and bugged him in the middle of a business trip. He was happy to help. Here's what he told me to do:

1) Put the CD in the drive and click on "My Computer," then click on the CD-rom drive
2) Find the genealogy file, click on it, and drag it to the desktop
3) Once it's on the desktop, it should open with the genealogy program. Open it and save it to your jump drive, hard drive, or floppy disk (I'd do all three, plus email it to about 18 relatives and send a GEDCOM to Rootsweb).
4) Keep messing around with it until it works. I had to tweak it several times before it would do what I wanted it to, but eventually the file was saved on a floppy disk and we all cheered and sighed huge sighs of relief.

I'm saving this information for the next time a patron comes in with one of these naughty CDs. They are NOT the genealogist's friend, unless you're saving pictures or documents or something you won't want to "mess with." They are for saving purposes ONLY. If you're like me and keep finding new stuff or get emails from new cousins all the time, for crying out loud, do NOT save your stuff on a compact disc.

P.S. This is very, very cool.

Staff Meeting Last Night

A website I was unaware of, for those of us who have early LDS Church members: Early Latter-day Saints

New Familysearch has been put on hold indefinitely.

Apparently, when the website went online in Mesa, Arizona, the thing just crashed. Other areas, in their "90-day rollout period," have longer to wait before the website is available to everyone in their areas, and those of us who were waiting patiently for our rollout period to begin are crying into our pedigree charts.

The purpose of the rollout period is to give Family History Center staff and ward consultants the opportunity to learn the program, so that when the website becomes available to everyone in the area, we can teach our ward members and FHC patrons how to use it. Having had a small taste of this program, I was really looking forward to its release, and I know it'll get here eventually... but I'm disappointed that it's taking even longer now.

New Familysearch will provide a way for us genealogists to look at all of our ancestors' entries that people have submitted over the years to the LDS Church genealogy database, and consolidate all those duplicated names into one name, thus helping to connect all of our work together. We'll all retain jurisdiction over our own work - no one will be able to change information we've submitted - but we'll be able to look over other genealogists' work and connect our people with theirs, forming a giant family tree.

While deceased persons' information will be visible to all, living persons' information will be kept private and only visible to that person. Everyone, not just LDS Church members, will have access to the website via a username and password.

If you have access to the new Familysearch, please use it often, enjoy it, and think of poor Millie when you do. Awwwww.

Went to my Family History Center staff meeting tonight...

[Originally, I posted a countdown calendar showing how many days were left until the new Familysearch would be available in my area... as of 4/11/08, there were 108 days left.]

And while I'm happy about this, I was a bit impatient to see that the following areas will be getting New FamilySearch before we will:

Tri-Cities, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Medford, Oregon

I have family members who don't even care, and they'll be able to log on to NFS before I will. My husband was mocking me tonight: "How DARE they throw pearls at those swine in Tri-Cities!"

Amen, babe. Amen.

Hitting Paydirt

On Tuesday night at the FHC, I noticed, when I used Google, that other genealogists before me had searched for names of their ancestors using quotation marks, like this:

"Ruby Valentine Fox."

I remembered reading that when you enclose your search terms in quotation marks, Google looks for exactly that phrase or name, instead of finding websites where the names appear but are not linked together. I never used it because I thought it was no big deal, until last night.

Just for fun, I entered Ruby's name in Google surrounded by quotation marks, and found a major source for her Arndt ancestors: The Story of the Arndts. And oh, what a treasure trove of Arndt family members it has turned out to be. I'm obsessed now. So far I've added almost 100 new family members and haven't even made it to Ruby's page yet.

This book also verifies ancestors' information I inherited from Gran, describes the service of the Revolutionary War patriots in the family (along with other military endeavors), and is chock-full of great sources itself, such as church and tax records. The book may provide a way to add the Arndt men's names (only a few are listed) to the DAR Patriot Index, which is something I remember DAR liked doing - finding new patriots.

I also found a copy of Gran's obituary by doing the same thing with his name.

From this experience, I've learned to never pooh-pooh a good genealogical search tip, no matter how small or goofy it may seem.

More DAR Stuff

I received a form from my local DAR lady last week, a form for getting a copy of Grandma Keen's DAR membership application. With it, I'll be able to send in my paperwork and become a member of DAR. I filled it out and sent it a few days ago.

Last night I found more DAR patriots in the Patriot Index, which is fun and exciting. (No, really. It is.) I'm up to "McDaniel" now in the book.

Also, my grandmother Abigail may finally have a maiden name: Dougall. Ever since I've known of her, she's been Mrs. Abigail Kettle Bathrick - her first husband Mansir Kettle died in 1773, and her second husband, Tillabee Bathrick, is my grandfather. I found her maiden name on New England Families, a website I LOVE for its rich notes, sources, and interesting information. Apparently I had an LDS uncle (Almon Bathrick) from back in the Joseph Smith days, who performed temple work on behalf of his ancestors in the first Nauvoo temple, including Tillabee and Abigail, in 1844. Now THAT is nifty. I'm waiting to hear back from New England Families guy.

I also looked up the females without last names, the Q and the R surnames last night in PAF Insight and found a few more things.

Elvis and DAR

So I'm chatting via email with bloggy sister Corrie, and she tells me about this nifty function Ancestry.com (formerly known as The Devil) provides. You upload your family tree, you click on a family member's name, and then click on "famous people" and it'll show all the people you MIGHT be related to through that person. So far, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, Princess Grace, Helen Keller, James Dean, Marlon Brando, a Mayflower passenger, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and numerous U.S. Presidents and First Ladies have popped up as possible relatives.

Of course, the accuracy of these links is iffy - the information is only as correct as the genealogists who contributed to OneWorldTree have made it. So, you know, we can take most of it with a grain of salt (I've already seen one blaring mistake, where the child was born before the mother). But it's still fun, and has spurred me on to check these connections out. I'd love to have a Mayflower ancestor, and Elvis being my cousin is actually looking pretty possible.

As most of these family ties involve colonial families, I spent some quality time this evening messing around with my "older" names - the names I've had forever but haven't done much with. Shock of all shocks, I have grandparents, aunts and uncles with only a BIRTH DATE. Neglectful me! I tried remedying that situation a little tonight. My aunt Daphne Proctor now has a husband and children.

Daphne got me started on my long-forgotten quest to become a member of NSDAR (National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution). My great grandmother, Alice Muriel Johnson Keen, a.k.a. "Alice Brown Eyes" at my house, was a member. Grandma Dot, her daughter, was most anxious for me to become a member. I was 24 at the time and not all that excited to join up with a bunch of blue-hairs who, I figured, would take one look at my youthful visage and say to each other, "New blood - GET HER!" Plus - this creeped me out - they all had to sign their names "Mrs. William Edgar Jones" (or whatever their husbands' names were) and at formal functions, they actually wore sequinned evening gowns and WHITE GLOVES. The horror!

Now that I'm considerably older, I figure, who cares? It would still be cool to be a member. All I'd have to do is order a copy of Alice's paperwork and prove my relationship to her, and I'm in like Flynn. (Who is Flynn?) I messed around on the DAR website for a while and filled out an online form to get on their call list.

Which prompted me to look up my patriot ancestors in the DAR Patriot Index. You only need one to join, but genealogically overachieving me - I think it would be fun to prove my relationship to ALL of them. Maybe by the time I'm 85, it'll be possible. Here's the list so far:

ARNDT: Abraham (1751-1825); Jacob (1725-1805); Jacob (1758-1831); John (1748-1814)
BATHRICK: Tillabee (1751-1831)
BURRUS: Thomas (1724-1788)
DANIEL: John (1751-1802)
DIMMICK: Timothy (1745-1807) - my possible Mayflower connection
DRAGOO: William (1747-1824)
DYER: Charles (1753-1845)
DYSART: James (1727-1781); James (1744-1818); John (1749-1842)
FOX: Abraham (1748-1777); Elijah (1758-1838); Joel (1754-1837)
GORTON: William (1750-1826)
JOLLIFFE: John (1751-1777)
LOCKE: James (1728-1808)
MCDANIEL: George (1722-1821); John (1751-1839)
MILLS: Nathaniel (1750-1815)
MORRISON: John (1729-1799)
PATTON: Robert (1747-1813)
PETTIGREW: George (1746-1818); James (1713-1784)
PHILLIPS: Caleb (1761-1829); Spencer (1755-1840), Thomas Jr. (1747-1829)
PROCTOR: James (1720-1790); Moses (1747-1805); Nathaniel Sr. (1723-1806); Nathaniel Jr. (1762-1855); Oliver (1745-1815); Peter (1735-1822)
REED: Jacob Sr. (1730-1820); Jacob Jr. (1762-1846)
RUCKER: Ambrose (1735-1807); Reuben (1755-1782)
SAYE: Richard (1740-1779)
SHOEMAKER: Jacob (1744-1810)
STRAIGHT: Jacob (1741-1796)

The great thing about finding them in the Index is all the missing information I scored in the process - a birth or death date here, a new marriage there. I probably have more, but I was only looking for grandfathers and uncles. Can you have an uncle or aunt as a patriot ancestor, or does it have to be a grandparent?

At any rate, the FHC was very fun this time - a most fruitful evening.

Aunt Jean

One day, I'll meet my great grandaunt Jean.

Eugenia Pearl Johnson - Jean - is my great Grandma Keen's older sister and she lived an interesting (sometimes unfortunate) life. She was married three times and had two daughters each with her first and second husbands, John J. Mullennax and Robey Harrison Tolliver. Tonight, I found missing information I'd been hoping to find for a long time about Robey and Jean's marriage.

As I've said before, for the most part I've given up trying to find really important, missing pieces of information. Now I just get to work and let it come. Tonight I took the extra step of praying before I started working on it. I plugged my PAF file into PAF Insight as usual, decided to work on the 3,000s, which happened to contain Aunt Jean's family, and thought, since it was slow and I was bored, "I should look up each person in Ancestry.com while PAF Insight is looking for them in the IGI and see if I find anything" and lo and behold, that's when I found them. I also had the Washington state digital archives page open and happened to type in the name "Tolliver," which led me right to Jean and her daughters.

Robey was one elusive man to find, but tonight I have information I found in his World War I and II draft registration cards. I found out he and Jean divorced and he moved to California, where he died. I found Jean's third husband and his first wife living in Salem, Oregon. I found out that Jean's daughter Florence Ellen "Frances" Mullennax had been married not once, but twice, and that her son is the product of her first marriage.

A good night. I definitely feel closer to Jean and her family.

Is It Tuesday Yet?

"It's either Tuesday or Not Tuesday." This is how I find myself thinking of the days of the week lately. If it's Tuesday, yay! If it's not, I'm counting the days till the next one.

Tuesday is the day I serve at my Family History Center. Every Tuesday evening, I show up, I plug in my jump drive, I turn on PAF Insight and I go to town.

PAF Insight is a program you can download for $20-ish, and I plan to have it on my own computer someday so I can use it at home too. But I love the usually uninterrupted time with my ancestors. I also love all the books, films and fiche at my disposal, with always more to find in the Family History Library Catalog.

Saturday today = three more days! I've never enjoyed a Church calling so much in my life.

Back At the FHC

Yay! My fellow staff member's rotator cuff surgery is over with and our shift started again tonight. We had one patron and we had the night to ourselves. I made some good progress.

I put my S surnames into PAF Insight and got some good dates, and while I was thus employed, I noticed that cousin Enoch Shackleford died in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1921, and was buried in his hometown. Wondering if he may have been in prison (I didn't know the guy - stranger things have happened), I looked for him in 1920 to see where he was living. I'm thinking the Leavenworth death place might be a mistake because his entire life, he lived in Greenfield, Dade, Missouri, and barely moved until he was buried there.

At any rate, once I found him in the 1920 census, it opened the door to his whole family. I found all four of his children (all I knew is that he and his wife HAD four children), almost all their spouses, and the grandchildren. I found birth dates and places I hadn't had previously (love that 1900 census) and made some serious progress on that family. And it just dropped out on my lap, practically. I considered my night successful.

Until next week!

It Was A Happy Night

I had a lady write to me last week after visiting my online family tree, asking about Archie Newton Watson and Doris (I had her first name as "Daisy") Audrey Simpson. FOUND 'EM TONIGHT. Doris' family lived in the same place for over 40 years. Ahhhh... I love it when they do that. I was able to send the lady four census images and Archie's WWI draft registration card image. Love the unlimited access to Ancestry.com at the FHC. LOVE it.

THEN... along came a sister from the other stake who needed some help finding information in the IGI. I hooked her up with PAF Insight and sat with her for over an hour, helping her plug in the new information she found. It turns out that Bri dated her cousin in Tri-Cities, where she's from. Small world. She was very happy about the results and asked if I would be there next week. Yay!

In the meantime, a fellow staff member was helping a young man find a relative and coming up empty, so I joined them on another computer and BAM had a census records in just a few seconds. YES. My staffer teased me about not puffing myself up. I was like, "you're welcome."

I love helping people. I was thinking about doing this as a business but it's so much more fun to give it away for free. :) Who knows, maybe I still will... but as long as I have this calling, I think not.

Yowza, What a Night

I serve every Tuesday night at a local Family History Center with other staff members. I go early every week so my husband can have the car for soccer practice, and this provides lots of great research time.

I had such great success last night that I commented to one couple that there's a reason why I was called to work at the FHC - all the great books I now have unlimited access to. "You get called to work here and you start finding stuff you wish you would have found 20 years ago," the husband agreed. It's so awesome. There are three different sets of volumes about colonial families, just at my little FHC, that have provided a ton of information.

PAF has been messing around with me... it stopped reusing deleted records, and pretty soon, adding new people, I noticed the RINs were creeping up in the 13000s. I knew there was no way I had that many people, so I made a new file. Sure enough - I'm right around 12,100. That's a tad more manageable.

A few years ago, I found Lorette Proctor's family tree in Familysearch and downloaded it, and the colonial families information has come in handy for verification. Good stuff. Last night I found lots of Dimmock information, some Byam, and a ton of Kendalls. For the Dysart side, I found some Tillinghasts.

Other great finds were this Dimmock website, another Proctor website starting with my earliest known ancestor, Evan Proctor, and directions to the Fiske Library in Seattle. Mary Fisk married Abraham Byam Jr.; they had Mary Byam; Mary married Moses Proctor. It would be a fun day trip, running up to Seattle and finding the book about Evan Proctor I found on their website.

And that was my night - Yay!!!