Janis Littlefield Crosses the Pond in Salt Lake City

As the Archived Document Contest came to an end entries submitted in March provided us a lot to appreciate. For an entire year we enjoyed stories of fellow researchers’ successes by finding information to enhance their research in locations that were not on the Internet. It was a little surprising that new sources could be exposed in this last month.

Mary Kircher Roddy submitted a Last Will and Testament that was over 200 years old and was filed in Lunenburg County, Virginia. Mary didn’t find this document online, but she didn’t have to travel to Virginia to obtain a copy of it either. She located it on a microfilm at the Family History Center in Salt Lake City.

Linda Stephens shared a story of heirloom napkin rings that had been turned into Sterling Silver bracelets. The pre-1890 napkin rings had been engraved with the names of family members, and this information led to additional curiosity. The curiosity led to a telephone call to a cemetery, who provided scanned images of 8 documents of family information.

Janis Littlefield won the contest for March with her submittal of a Wurttemberg Emigration document. In the late 1800s individuals that wanted to emigrate (or leave) Germany, often did so through Wurttemberg. In order to be given permission to emigrate they were required to file an application. Many did sneak out of the country, but later found it necessary to send documents back to Germany to complete immigration requirements into another country. Documents collected included family history information often complete with copies of records. This collection contains over 60,000 names and fills 8 volumes. Janis found her family in this collection while researching at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. She was able to identify three generations in one record. She declares it the best document for “crossing the pond”.

Janis wins an annual subscription to Fold3 for her winning entry. Fold3 is one of genealogist’s beloved websites. It focuses on military history and claims to have more than 482 million original documents available to browse and download.

The Archived Document Contest is officially closed. In the next month the judges have some important work to do. The twelve winning entries from each of the year’s monthly contests will be reviewed to determine two winners. The judges will be reviewing everything from 20^th century vital records to Civil War era letters. They will examine documents that tied researchers to various generations of ancestry. They will once again be exposed to records written not only in English, but also in French and German. The two final prizes are a subscription to Ancestry.com and findmypast.com. Winners will be announced in May 2016 and announcements will be made in this blog and on the TriCity Genealogical Society Facebook page.