Saturday Night Fun Thankful

Hey genea-philes ... it's SATURDAY NIGHT again - time for more GENEALOGY FUN!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Think about the answers to these questions:

a. Which ancestor are you most thankful for, and why?

b. Which author (book, periodical, website, etc.) are you most thankful for, and why?

c. Which historical record set (paper or website) are you most thankful for, and why?

a. Well my mom and dad come to mind first, but my grandmother Cleo Kelly was probably the ancestor that I am most thankful for. Grandma Kelly was the second oldest of 17 children of Orville Travis. Her mother Donna Vanderpool had seven kids and died shortly after child number seven was born and so Orville married Bessie Keith and had ten more kids. If you look at the time between the first three children of Orville and Donna they may have had a couple more as there is almost a four year gap before and after my grandmother was born. Grandma Kelly lived to age 93 and I was 36 when she died, so I knew her longer than any other of my grandparents. She was also the family historian, and collected the Kelly Bible and stacks of newspaper clippings (none with dates or name of the newspaper) on the family, so when I got interested in genealogy I had a pretty good start.

b. Well the author I am most thankful for is Winthrop Alexander author of the Dillingham Family of New England. Winthrop collected information on the Dillingham family for about 50 years. My other grandmother was Anna Dillingham and she was in that book and it took my Dillingham's back to New England in 1632 and into England for another couple of generations, so as a new genealogist to have found information back that many generations was really amazing. Did Winthrop list any sources? Not a single one, but except for a few transposed dates he seems to have gotten all the information in that book correct.

c. The historical record set I am most thankful for is the Washington State Digital Archives. Why I use it almost daily in helping people that send queries to Eastern Washington Genealogical Society.