Monday, November 16, 2009

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Nice Thing

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Nice Thing

Well I am a little late as I was away from my computer for 4 days, but back now for a while.
Here is your genealogy writing mission, if you decide to accept it (cue the Mission: Impossible music...):

1. What is the Nicest Thing another genealogist did for you, or to you, in the last week or so? (If you have no examples for this past week, go back in time - surely someone has done a nice thing for you in recent years!).
Well lets pick Vicky Dalton the Spokane County Auditor. She is not really a genealogist, but her office holds a lot of records important to genealogists, the most important is marriage records, but she also has some early birth and death records and all the land records for Spokane County. A little over five years ago the county had a budget problem and each county office was supposed to cut their budget about 30% due to a new city being formed in the county. While a lot of county offices lost about 30% of the work they had previously done that was not real hard, but the Auditors office did not lose any work. Soon after the new city was formed I received a note in my in box at the library asking for a genealogist to help other genealogists get copies of records from the Auditors office. Vicky was a little reluctant to let me do those look ups, but she did. So now the nice things she has done for me. A couple of years ago at a candidate forum at our local community center, her opponent did not show up so she gave her opening speech and near the end she pointed out a very special person in the audience (it was me) that had helped the Auditors office when they were very short of money. While I know a lot of people at the Community Center, I never told any of them I was volunteering at the Auditors office, so they were somewhat surprised. A few weeks ago the Washington State Digital Archives celebrated its fifth birthday and the Auditors of Washington were one of the driving forces in getting it built, so Vicky was one of the speakers and once again I was pointed out to the crowd as a help in the Auditors office and also to the Digital Archives.

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