Wednesday 30 March 2016

2016 Q1 Research Update

The first quarter of 2016 is over, and it's time for my first research update!  I thought this would be a good way to keep track of significant research accomplishments and findings, as sometimes it can be easy to feel like I'm not making any progress towards cracking some of those pesky brick walls.  It was a busy semester between grad school and work, so I didn't have as much "genealogy time" as I would have liked, but I was still able to have a few small successes...

Genealogy Research Updates:
  • I ordered the divorce records for my 2x great grandparents (Peter Newgard and Minnie Rasmussen) from the Minnesota Historical Society.  While it didn't have the all the information I was hoping for about whatever happened to Peter Newgard after he deserted the family, it was still very interesting to see the legal details of the case and getting these records is a crucial part of that ever-important exhaustive search
  • Someone on Find-A-Grave was very generous in fulfilling the photo request that I had put out almost a year ago for the headstones of Minnie Rasmussen and her second husband Christian Johnson!
  • In an effort to earn more Find-A-Grave karma, I walked to the Ottawa Memorial over the Easter long weekend and fulfilled a few photo requests.
  • In other headstone related-news, I lucked upon a treasure trove of gravestone pictures for my Ontario McRae's on www.canadianheadstones.ca  I usually just check Find-A-Grave, so this was a good reminder to myself to branch out more often to the other cemetery-related websites.  This particular headstone was one of the 3-generation group stone that had helpful language like "his son", "his wife" etc., included the wife's maiden name, AND had the U.E. post-nominal initials which is all very exciting!
  • Speaking of U.E., I have been chipping away with research on my loyalist lines (Cook, Chisholm, and McRae) in the hopes of one day having enough documentation to apply for certification with the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada (basically Canada's DAR).
  • I inquired to a local church in Saskatchewan about whether or not my great-grandparents were buried in their adjacent cemetery.  Unfortunately the answer was no, but the secretary was going to get in touch with some family still in the area to see if they know any more details.
  • While cleaning up, my mom found a copy of my maternal grandparents' original marriage record and sent me a scan.
  • I added all available pics to the relevant profiles for the Pierson WWI Memorial Project and started working on adding obituaries as LAC digitizes the appropriate service records.
  • My unsorted scanned photo/document folder was reduced from 125 to 92.
  • I cleaned up all the birth and death dates in my tree to conform with the genealogical standard and correct any mistakes I had made at the beginning of my research.
  • I finally found the parents for my "orphan" Find-A-Grave baby!  At one point when I had requested my grandfather's memorial page ownership be transferred to me, the creator of the page also transferred the memorial of a still-born baby that had the same last name. Unfortunately, the little baby wasn't part of my family, and it had become a personal quest to find the baby's rightful family and reconnect them on Find-A-Grave.  Success!

Tree stats:
1732 people
519 photos
2712 records

3 comments:

  1. Welcome to Geneabloggers! This is a great site. My blog is also new today on here. Maybe we should follow each other. Our blogs will have the same blogversaries!
    thehoneymoontrail.blogspot.com

    Regards, Grant

    Grant

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chelsea,

    I want to let you know that your blog is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2016/04/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-april-8-2016.html

    Have a great weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're making great progress. Congrats. Welcome to the Geneabloggers Family.
    Regards,
    Theresa
    http://tangledtrees.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete