Swinging From the Branches of My Family Tree

I had located my great-grandfather’s Civil War unit; a piece of information my family didn’t have until that very moment. The volunteer handed me forms to fill out and for a nominal fee I was able to order copies of his military records from the National Archives. A bulging manila envelope arrived in the mail a few weeks later and now I was really hooked. The process was thrilling eventually, but rather lacking in the ‘instant gratification’ department. Aunt Bessie was quite pleased, by the way; she had the information she wanted and she knew another member of the family had ‘the bug’.

Microfilm can also be ordered to examine at a nearby LDS Family History center if you know what you need, thus bypassing the whole bus trip experience. Somehow I just never got around to exploring that system during the ensuing years.

Periodically I worked on organizing boxes of photographs I had inherited. It was time consuming and frustrating; most were unidentified. I had everything from inexpensive snapshots to antique tintypes. I arranged branches of the family tree by typing out the layers of generations and adding bits of information along the way. Most the time I did nothing at all. I suppose one could say my ‘sickness’ went into remission for about 15 years. Last winter, however, two cousins (also successfully infected by dear Aunt Bessie) and I spent some time together comparing notes on our common ancestors. The result was that the fever is upon me again.

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Swinging From the Branches of My Family Tree

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