Saturday Night Fun First Research Problem

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 

1)  Think back to when you first started doing genealogy and family history research.  What was one of your first real research problems?  How did you attack the problem?  Did you solve the problem?  If so, how?  What lessons did you learn from this experience?


Well I knew next to nothing about either one of my grandmothers, I learned a lot about both grandfathers, my grandpa Kelly had a bible of his family and it went back several generations. We had a Hansen reunion and so I learned a lot about my grandpa Hansen, but next to nothing about his wife Anna Dillingham. So I found a Dillingham newsletter, and subscribed, and soon I found my Dillinghams were English Quakers and came to New England in 1630, bought a wonderful book called the Dillinghams of New England, it has a few errors, but mostly everything is correct.
I had asked my Grandma Kelly if all her family was Irish, and so when I started researching her I contacted the local gene society where she was born, and asked if they knew a very large Travis family, since my grandmother had 16 brothers and sisters but only 7 by her mom Donna Vanderpool. (Vanderpool is Dutch not Irish), the next 10 were by the second wife Bessie Keith who was Irish and so that is where my grandmother got that all her ancestors were Irish.
So I learned to contact a local gene society and look for newsletters researching a single surname. I actually subscribed to 7 or 8 surname newsletters at one time, but my subscribing seemed the kiss of death for newsletters as all but two quit soon after I subscribed, and now only one is left. I do research for our local gene society trying to pay back all the work I received when I was researching my grandma.