Saturday, November 24, 2012

It's been a while...


Well my friends, it's been a while since I have blogged -- life has been very hectic, to say the least!

I have ripped apart the family tree and have worked on many details which I had overlooked many times from old documents which I had forgotten I'd owned. Isn't it always like that some times? You find one clue, which sparks a memory of another document you all ready have, so you go looking for that document, find it, then see every little detail which you missed five years ago when you saved it!

It's like that sometimes when locating family lines through census data and ship's manifests and obituaries.

I have found the perfect quote, however, which sums it up quite nicely: "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." ~ Henry David Thoreau

I had laughed quite a bit over that one, mostly because I was laughing at myself for having this evidence staring me in the face and over looking it for so long. I have since added new source documents and citations to my family tree for parts of my father's and parts of my mother's family trees.

I keep flashing back to all the cemeteries that were back home, that I passed every day, that I never knew I had ancestors in. I also have been thinking about those little out of the way family cemeteries in Merrimack Massachusetts which I used to pass by as a kid and I wonder about the names there and if those little family plots, snuggled so tight in very rural areas, and what names are listed there.

One of the many family plots I used to pass by was located on Heath Rd, which was off of Brandy Brow Rd, on the back roads leading into Merrimack. It was located on the right hand side of the street, if you were coming from Brandy Brow, and nestled back a bit, surrounded by trees, and if you get to Hadley Road, you've gone too far.

I don't know if anyone who reads this is out in the greater Haverhill, Massachusetts area, but if you are and you have a camera or a 5MP (or higher) camera phone, take a few pictures for me...I would love to read the names and the dates...

I have tried Googling it, but have not found it on Google Maps or any reference of it anywhere.

I also remember the John Greenleaf Whittier birth place and the head stones out there in the woods where his family was buried...that was only about 2 or 3 miles from the one I mentioned above...it seems as if there were a lot of little family burials done in the woods and in nature out there...so many memories...some day when I return, I will most certainly take my boys with me and we will go back packing in the area for the day and will have such a great day filled with history and "treasure hunting"!

I would buy a house in the old neighborhood, someplace centrally located and someplace which would have enough room for my office and my library, not to mention room for family (the most important aspect of a home)...

I am going to get back to my research, but I think I am going to start using my blog as part of my research journal, which I have been keeping in a log book, so that it is easier for me and for other genealogists to search and maybe compare notes and information.

Keep looking my friends, keep looking...


~ Vince ~ 



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