Delving Into The Past

Things have been pretty quiet here the last few days. We did get a few inches of snow this week. Old Man Winter is a bit behind schedule this year. Zach was on the Boy Scout shovel list for the second snowfall,so we went down to the Grange where we have our meetings to shovel the walkways. There is a church in the Grange building as well. It's our Troop's duty to keep the area clean in the winter so the church folk and the Grange and Odd Fellows can have a clear pathway to their services/meetings. We only have two shovels,so Zach shoveled the walkway,Rick chipped the ice and then he spread some sand that we had for our driveway. I had the hard job of playing solitaire on my Kindle in the warm truck. :)

This morning Rick has gone down to Farmington for the first part of the Asst.Scoutmaster training.He is a bit nervous because he is not familiar with who is going to be there,and he hasn't been to the school in which it's going to be held in a long time,so it's like being in a strange place all over again. His hyper vigilance goes up in situations like this,but he has to dive right in and not avoid them. He's a trooper. 

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day on my Family Tree Maker. I discovered in my Ancestry.com account that someone had sent me an email regarding my great grandfather Lessard,and come to find out,this person is actually a cousin of mine. Of course,I rarely get into my Ancestry.com email account,so this email was rather old (Sept) and the info they were asking for they had already found and posted. This led me to delve into my side of the family,and I discovered that I had some wrong info,which I corrected,but the new info was amazing-I have 7th great grandfather who was abducted by Native Americans from ME and brought to Canada.His mother and six siblings were killed at their home,and his Dad,who was fisherman by trade,was gone at the time. Now that is quite a find!

This is pile of genealogy papers I have:

Remember my goal was do get all these papers into the file cabinet in folders so I can just pull things up quickly. I brought the pile (which was quite heavy) to the computer desk,plopped everything down,and stared at it:

Where do I start? I figured the loose papers would be the best bet,and,to be honest,the easiest. How to separate them though?.Many families had to merge to form the family of Albert Lessard and Doris Charrette or the Richard F Shaw Sr and Barbara McQuilkin family. I figured the easiest thing to do would be make folders with our grandparents last names,then any names that were in their lineage I would put into that folder. So I have (for my family) Lessard,Charrette,Magnan and Thompson and for Rick,Shaw,Batchelder,Pratt, and McQuilkin. It worked well for the loose papers,then I had a few notebooks that I could just tear the pages out of and put in those folders.

Then I hit a snag.

I have couple of notebooks which are packed full,and divided by family. And the binders are the same. Hmmm.Seems like ripping all the info out would be a waste of organization. At this point,my brain was on overload,so I put everything on top of the printer and stopped for the day. Then,like I mentioned, I spent a good part of  yesterday working on info. So the pile is still on top of the printer.The filled notebooks I could fit into the file cabinet,and one of folders,but I have a big binder that won't fit.Maybe I can lay it down on bottom of the drawer.

Time also to start thinking about ordering new seeds for the garden. We have had ours for three years. Time to start fresh!