GeneaBabble

I’m such a procrastinator. Instead of getting my dad’s estate account filed last year I kept putting it off. Well, I got an order to appear in probate court and file the account or they would do nasty, vile things to me. The appointment was this morning. I was all nervous thinking everyone was going to tell me what a naughty boy I am. Instead, I was the only one on time for the hearing and it basically consisted of, “Looks good! Happy Holidays!”

Anyway, I really prefer going to probate court to do RESEARCH! Please, kids, don’t procrastinate!

Yikes! Submitting to Cyndi’s List sure has given me a lot of attention! For those of you just discovering this site please don’t be discouraged by the lack of posts. I just started this a week or so ago and I’m adding to it regularly. So if genealogy or land research is your thing, please bookmark me! Thanks muchly!

Looks like Steve Morse has added a new Ellis Island search form on the One-Step site — the gold form. I hadn’t noticed this sooner since I haven’t done any immigration work recently. It allows you to search on all transcribed fields for all passengers in the database! Woohoo! It also allows you to search on traveling companions, specify the sort-order for the results and also specify which fields to display on the results page. Pretty cool stuff.

If you’ve never checked out Steve Morse’s site you really should. It makes searching through the seemingly infinite amount of databases much easier and puts them all in one place.

The Iowa Gravestone Photo Project is an awesome, awesome thing! I may be a bit biased, however. It turns out that some kind volunteer has photographed every tombstone in Bethel Cemetery outside of Logan. This cemetery is the final resting place of over four generations of McKeans. Go ahead - do a search for McKean in Harrison County!

These are the kinds of projects that everyone who is passionate about genealogy should be involved in! Think of how great it would be if you could find a photograph of almost any tombstone you were looking for. There’s also projects like Family Old Photos and others. All we need are volunteers to take photographs or scan old photographs or transcribe old documents, and so on.

Genealogy is like a drug without any harmful side-effects (well, maybe losing your hair and some slight neurosis.)  The thrill of finding that one clue that makes everything fall into place is indescribable.  It makes all the frustration of running into dead-ends worth it.  It doesn’t matter whose family I’m working on… it is just as enjoyable to solve these mysteries for other people as it is to discover something new about my own family.

I suppose a lot of genealogists are the same way.  It’s the thrill of the hunt, although in this case I think the kill is actually even better than the chase.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run around screaming “I FOUND IT!! I FOUND IT!!” much to the surprise and dismay of everyone else in the room.

So, anyway, I’m not sure what my point here was, but I’m having a lazy afternoon and… ooh.. something shiny!