Thursday, January 16, 2014

Back To School

It has been three months since I've posted anything on this blog.  It's not because I haven't done any genealogy research but it's true that I've done very little. We moved into our new home in Sun City Center and all the details that are involved with that are the only real excuse I've got for not doing much research. What I have done was mostly reactive work...answering inquires from other members of Ancestry.com that question links between our family trees. And the website itself frequently emails me with "hints" that are computer generated to alert me that information has come up that may be of interest to my tree. So the little bit of research I've done has been quite random and, therefore, not anything that I would be interested in posting. 

I still go back from time to time onto Ancestry.com to see if any thing new has come up on the subjects of my blog postings...Edwin Martin Currier, my grandfather George Johnson King, and my maternal grandmother's siblings, Rollin Farquhar Webber and Lenora Webber.  Once in a while a hint comes along or I think of something related to the subjects that I might not have considered before so when that happens I'm back on the website trying to dig out more information. The investigation part has a lot to do with what is fun about genealogy for me. But that's not to say I don't appreciate a helping hand from my ancestors. The diaries of my great great grandfather, John Currier, have given me a wealth of information to help my investigation of the Currier family during the mid 19th Century. And my grandmother, Florence (Webber) Currier wrote a memoir of sorts in a letter to her daughter, Alice. Documents like these don't eliminate investigation but they help clear a path, so to speak, to enhance research of family history as well as verify information.  My grandmother Currier, for instance was born in Maine, lived and worked in Massachusetts, and lived and died in New Hampshire. She was also listed on the 1900 Federal Census in Los Angeles, California. Her memoirs explained why she was in California and verified for my family history records that the census data was indeed my grandmother. 

Soooooo, I'm going to offer similar assistance to my heirs. I'm going to take a course offered at a local community college designed to help me to write my life story.  Don't get in line for tickets to the movie yet. The completed work might have some issues with mundanenes that Hollywood producers could find troublesome. Anyway, over the course of the next eight weeks or so I'll give it a shot to see if I can clear the path a little for whoever in subsequent family generations decide they want to do a little genealogy work. Hope I can make it a little easier for them.