I’ve spent several evenings reading through the Revolutionary War pension application and supporting documents of my 4th great grandfather, Abiel Chandler this week. I originally ordered the documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) several years ago and dutifully logged them into my Clooz records database, put them in acid-free sleeves and then filed them in a storage binder. Unfortunately, even though I’d read the data in the pension documents, I must have become temporarily addled, because I hadn’t transcribed the family history related info they contain into my records.
Bingo! There they were and they were much more readable than the photocopies I’d received from
While still logged in to Footnote, I wrote a story page that included all of Abiel’s pension documents as well as four military pay receipts for him that were on the site.
The story thus far is about ‘found’ data in records I already owned. Once again, I thought of the ease that I’d enjoyed finding Abiel’s records online. It was after midnight, while listening to some smooth jazz, in my PJ’s, drinking egg nog at home. Nice!
If I’d ordered the same packet from
The same is true for subscriptions to Ancestry, World Vital Records, and other similar sites. Do a free search on these subscription sites and see if you find records that pertain to your family. Calculate the cost to obtain the same data from the Family History Library or a library near you and then determine how quickly the expense of visiting the libraries eclipses a subscription to an online research site. If you are like me, the answer is one trip to the library and unlike the subscription website, when my day is over at the library, so are my research discoveries from their records. However, the subscriptions last all year long and I don’t have to fight the traffic on I-15.
Smooth Jazz, PJ’s, egg nog. My family history research life is great!
Happy Holidays! Tell your sweetheart you want a research site subscription for Christmas!
1 comments:
It should be a regular practice to "revisit" old records. What may not have seemed importent at first could take on new light. I also go thru my collection of genealogy periodicals at least once a year, to see if any of the articles I didn't read in depth may now pertain to something I am researching.
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