Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Family History Library Research Retreat, part 2

See part 1 here.

With my first full day of FHL research behind me, I returned each morning with a plan. The second day, I sought and located marriage records for my Lenertz line in Blue Earth county, Minnesota. There wasn't much groundbreaking research going on. I knew what I needed and I found it. Most of the records were to help me add more information to my 100% cited family tree.


One of the more interesting things I found was a record of physicians in Stephens County, Oklahoma. My great-grandfather, his uncle and a cousin were all included there. I also found a ton of marriage records. I knew the dates, I just needed the records for them to be legit in the eyes of the genealogy police.

I spent most of my week at left-handed reader 6-L on the United States floor. It was usually quiet in my row because, well...it's a right-handed world out there:


What makes it left-handed? The handle is on the left. Really, I could deal with either handle, but I needed the lefty writing space for my mess research.



My biggest challenge of the week was the search for and location of probate records for my 4th great-grandfather John McElroy Bourland. I first checked the indexes and dutifully wrote down the pages where I should find the records. However, the pages didn't correspond. Finally, after a page-by-page inspection of the film, I found an estate list for Bourland and then finally all of the related records. This entire process took six hours, plus another to acquire copies of all the documents. Persistence paid off.

On to part 3 here.



[Please see my Disclosures page for information on my connection to Family History Expos. --Amy]



4 comments:

  1. Left-handed readers in SLC -- now I'm really excited!

    Do your Bourlands have any connection to southern Illinois? I don't have any direct connection to the Bourlands but there are a couple in my extended family tree.

    Cathy

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  2. Cathy, my John Bourland was born in Henderson, Kentucky in 1804. Looking at a map, it's a possibility. However, John's dad was born in North Carolina. John and family migrated to Texas, which is where I found his probate records.

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  3. My husband and I worked/lived on the job at Northwest Microfilm (based out of Spokane) for five years. Oh, the stories we could tell! We'd have to change all the names and alter incidents to protect the guilty.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Amy!

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  4. Thanks for the Bourland update, Amy. Have fun!

    Cathy

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