Miscellaneous Monday

A year ago I treated myself to a subscription to Ancestry.com. On some of my family lines, I got to the point that in order to go back any further I needed to, as the saying goes, to “jump the pond”. With that in mind, a few months ago, I upgraded my account to the full access subscription. I now have access to the records in the database from all over the world. 

Shortly after upgrading my sub, I talked my Canadian friend, Sharon, into letting me research her family. We both were then sidetracked by other interests. This past week, however, we returned to the researching fun. 

What a lot of fun it is! Perhaps it is the researcher in me, but every time I find a new link, I get excited. It doesn’t matter if that person is related to me; when I discover information or people I didn’t previously know, my internal self does a happy dance. 

Alright. I may have been known to do fist pumps and exclaim aloud on occasion. 

Grandma Ethel's birth record

 It doesn’t take much information for me to get started. A few names, dates and locations are all that is needed to start on the path to more. Like with my friend Sharon. She didn’t have much to give me at first. She told me her parents’ names and dates, and those of her grandparents, but she wasn’t certain of some of the info. For example, she thought her grandma Ethel was born in Russia. With a little searching, I found a birth record for someone with the same name who was born in Ontario, Canada. She fit the other criteria: parents born in Russia, family was Jewish, and born around the right time. After asking her father about it, Sharon informed me that I had the right person! 

It is amazing to me. After 23 years (that’s nearly 2/3 of my life!) of doing genealogy, I am still as excited by the work as I was when my friend Jessica’s mother first introduced me to the field.