So, What Can You Find in a Month of Travel and Research?

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Man and I are back in our stick built home in SE Michigan.  We took just about one month to travel from East Tampa through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and back to Michigan.

After we cleared the Florida/Georgia state line our first stop was in Statesboro, Bulloch County, Georgia. We have been there before, there is a nice campground close to town and the Statesboro Regional Library has one terrific genie research room.  Many volunteers over many years have created a researchers dream in that room, resources abound!  Bless the volunteers!

I also paid several visits to Springfield, Effingham County, Georgia.  Even though Effingham is right next door to Bulloch County, in our prior visits to the area we had not driven over. We stopped at the library, the historical society and several cemeteries.

We stayed in Statesboro for a week.  Between the 2 libraries, the cemeteries and the historical society I visited, as well as a private guided tour by a cousin and some driving around, I have well over 550 images on my camera alone to play with over the summer.  I think about 300 of those images are obituaries.  I have shared those with a fellow family researcher.  She may still be downloading them from Dropbox!

One cemetery that I visited, the Mizpah United Methodist Church, is where I suspect my ancestress Mariah Grant Remley and her husband, William H. Remley are buried.  The cemetery is in Effingham County Georgia, very near the county line of Colleton County South Carolina.  If they are buried here, their gravesites are unmarked.  However, visiting the cemetery gave me a sense of closure, seeing it in person helped me understand.  A very good thing.

From Statesboro we drove north to the Atlanta area where I had the opportunity to meet two special cousins.  One I had met just days before in Statesboro, the other I met in Atlanta for the first time. Hard to beat personal meet ups with cousins. What a special day that was, the memories will last forever.

Next stop on our ride north was Chattanooga, no research, just a week to play tourist. Leaving Chattanooga we drove 2 days to Fort Wayne Indiana where we spent 4 nights, and I had the opportunity to research for 3 days at the Allen County Public Library.

Busy with that research stuff:  Lap top, iPad, books, books, fabulous books:

I cannot tell you how many wonderful hours, days, weeks, I have spent researching at the Allen County Public Library.  They are always adding new resources and I found some to have a look at this time.  I came home with 50 pages or more of printed matter and uncounted digital images made with that iPad.  I learned the maiden names of at least two of my previously known as "Bride (mnu)".

(MNU stands for maiden name unknown, it can be a controversial factor in genie data bases, many find fault with it, but, that is a discussion for another time and place. In fact, I have written about MNU before, at Reflections.)

Now, slaying the MNUs:

Below:  A book of extracted data from a early newspaper from Ontario Canada where one of Man's lines lived for 50 to 75 years.  Prior to finding this extraction I had no idea of Margaretha's maiden name.  I have not found a marriage record for them.  1868 sometimes can be problematic in Ontario.  Now, with her maiden name, I will go searching again.  I am thrilled to have a maiden name.  AND, a marriage "event" date.  Great leads for future research.

Since this one is a bit hard to read, it is a marriage between Johannes Gerth and Margaretha Dietrich on April 12, 1868.  At some point, I will see if I can locate the actual papers, maybe digital??  I can hope.

Below, another maiden name is found.  This one is the name of a Lashbrook bride's mother.  I love fleshing out the family tree and will add parents and such if I can find them.  I was more than a bit interested in this McLaughry lineage as there were some rumblings on the internet and elsewhere that this line may connect with the McLaury brothers who are buried at Tombstone Arizona in Boothill Cemetery.  Frank and Tom McLaury were "murdered" on the streets of Tombstone in 1881 during the shootout at the OK corral (involved Doc Holiday and the Earps, including Wyatt.)  I did not find proof of it during the short time I had to spend with this HUGE book, but, hey, I found a maiden name!  Can't beat that!

And, that is part of what you can find in a month of travel and research.  Special cousins, maiden names, obituaries, cemeteries that may or may not be the final resting place for your ancestors, and enough leads and research fodder for months to come.

Research on - -




*The pages I have marked with yellow highlighter and pencil are photocopies from the book. I did not write on the original.  Just sayin - -

**By the way, Calvin's surname is spelled McLaury on his mausoleum wall.  Photo from my personal collection taken during a visit to Blackwell, Kay County, Oklahoma a few years ago.

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