Be Curious. Be Very Very Curious.

To "Be Curious" could be the motto and seems to be the theme of December’s Archived Document Contest. Curiosity leads us to look closer and ask questions instead of merely being satisfied with simple facts. We can build a pedigree chart with simple facts but fulfilling family history research comes from wanting and obtaining much more information. This information provides color and interest to the stories we accumulate about our family history.

In December Ray Baalman encouraged us to pay attention when we see narrative in any list of events that occurred in our ancestor’s town or neighborhood. We should be curious and ask ourself how this event could have impacted their daily life.

Art Kelly encouraged us to use our curiosity to ask questions. He provided his testimony of how he hit what he called the “jack-pot” of ancestral artifacts including letters, pictures, and certificates. By communicating with a cousin he showed that he was worthy of being handed this treasure trove because he was curious and wanted more information about his family’s history.

Lawrence Clay

The winner of December’s contest was Lawrence Clay. Obtaining death certificates of his grandparents made him curious. Both of their death certificates provided a birth location that he didn’t expect. By asking questions a beautiful story was discovered that helped him understand his great-grandparents motives and life in more detail. Lawrence wins a subscription to "Your Genealogy Today" magazine for his entry to the contest.

Clay's grandparents Death Certificates

Be curious. Don’t be merely satisfied. Ask questions and watch the color of your family stories become vivid recollections.

January’s Archived Document Contest is in process. To enter the contest simply submit a digital image of an archived document that you obtained in any method other than downloading from the Internet. Provide how you obtained the document and how it pertains to your family history research. You can either post the image and narrative on the TriCity Genealogical Society Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TriCityGenealogicalSociety or email them to Susan Davis Faulkner at denmother4 at hotmail.com. January’s contest is sponsored by Technical Training Mall LLC and the winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to Red Lobster.

Winner of May's Archived Document Contest Announced

There were only a few submissions in May 2015 for the Archived Document Contest but these few entries provided wonderful lessons. Documents from the 1700s and the 1900s were located on microfilms available through the Family History Library. The documents on these microfilms containing important genealogical information were viewed in Salt Lake City and also at the Richland Family History Center. This proved to us that travel is not necessary when looking for un-digitized documents. Microfilms from the Family History Library can be brought to our neighborhood Family History Centers.

Ray Baalman is this month’s winner of the Archived Document Contest. He submitted two documents from 1700s France. More importantly he shared with us a very valuable lesson. “The important principle illustrated here is NEVER overlook the importance of witnesses at baptisms and marriages. They are often relatives and can give important clues about where to look next.” Ray illustrated this lesson by explaining that he found his seventh great grandmother recorded as the godmother of his fifth great grandmother on that grandmother’s marriage record.

Ray wins an annual subscription to Newspapers.com. With this subscription he will have access to over 3600 newspapers from the 1700s to the 2000s. There are currently 103,266,276 pages available for viewing through the every-word searchable databases. For more information about Newspapers.com go to www.newspapers.com or read their very entertaining blog titled Fishwrap at blog.newspapers.com

Below is Ray Baalman's submission including copies of the documents and a translation from French to English. 

Here is an entry for May's Archived Record Contest from Ray Baalman.

I am submitting two eighteenth-century documents I discovered on microfilms from the Family History Library and read at the Richland Family History Center. I am submitting both because they are related, and they point out an important principle of genealogical research. I am also appending a transcription and translation of the records since they are in French and a bit hard to read.

For many centuries, most of my French ancestors lived in or very nearby the town of Saint Avold in the east of France, not far from the German border. One of the more prominent members of the family, Christophe Margot, was a successful tanner, who lived and practiced his trade in the town of Saint Avold. I found his baptismal record in the parish register and nothing more until his first child was baptized when Christophe was 29 years old. I could not find Christophe’s marriage record.

After locating the baptismal records of all three of his children and studying them closely, I discovered that his second child (my fifth great-grandmother), who was baptized in 1721, had godparents who came from a different town (sarlouys on the record, now spelled Saarlouis) some 20 miles north of Saint Avold. I ordered the film for marriage records in Saarlouis (which was in France then, but is now in Germany) and found that the marriage had taken place there in 1717. The marriage record also proved that the godmother of my fifth great-grandmother was her grandmother, my seventh great.

The important principle illustrated here is NEVER overlook the importance of witnesses at baptisms and marriages. They are often relatives and can give important clues about where to look next.