My boss told me that I could take a day off today and use some sick time, which I never get to use and an about to hit my cap on. So, I thought I'd spend the day doing some genealogy. And I did kinda do that, but not the way I'd planned.
So, my original plan was to visit the local Family History Center. I've never done this before, even though they are only about five minutes from my house. I spent yesterday evening browsing the online catalogue and finding resources that might be valuable to me. I was specifically looking at researching the Albea family of Lincoln County, GA and Iredell County, NC before that. I printed out some sources and a bit of family tree info and planned to go by the next morning.
However, in the morning I checked my email and saw that my associate degree diploma was ready to be picked up. Yay! This pretty much trumped any other plans for the day. By the time I drove halfway around Atlanta and back, got home and ate lunch, the FHC was closed. However, they open for a few hours in the evening, so I thought I'd go then.
But then, I got a call from my Aunt June (my dad's sister, as opposed to my mom's sister, also named June). She had previously mentioned that her sister, my Aunt Charlotte, would be in town sometime soon and they wanted to get together and talk genealogy. Now she knew that my Aunt would be in town starting tomorrow, so we set up a time to meet this Friday. This was a bit earlier than I'd expected, so I wasn't prepared. I have since spent the rest of the night creating reference notebooks for each Aunt.
As I was printing out my records about their Dad (my grandfather), I started thinking about some comments that my dad had made earlier in the day. From my grandfather's WWII army separation notice, we know that he received a WWII victory medal and an Occupation Ribbon for Germany. My dad had asked my aunt about these, but she didn't have them and, logically, she's the only person that would have them. Since she doesn't, it's assumed that they were destroyed in the house fire in the 1960s. So I thought I'd look into possibly ordering replacements for these. After about 10 minutes on the National Archives website, I had finished doing so. I'm not 100% that we'll receive the medals - the form just seemed too easy! But, we'll see what happens.
I'm now sidetracked with putting together genealogy information for my aunt's visit, so the FHC visit has been put on pause. Hopefully I'll get to it next week, when I legitimately have Tuesday off. :) Does anyone have any advise for me or tips on what to expect?
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2 comments:
I live up here in Northern Indiana, and I have been to the local FHC two times. The first time was to order the film and the second time was to read the film. I found a VERY valuable record on the film, so it was worth my time and effort to go through the proceedures required.
The people were friendly and showed me how to fill the forms out and how to run their reading machines.
They are now indexing their records online, so maybe in a few years it will be easier to obtain the info from our computers than to run to the FHC.
Every FHC is different, based on size and staff. Mine is a small suburban one. I'm pretty independent and don't need much help, which is good because the expertise of the staff varies. Everyone is always very nice. You are fortunate to live so close to one. You're going to get hooked on ordering those films!
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