My mother, a late bloomer? I've never thought of her that way until last week, when I heard Melissa Barker's presentation about finding records for our female ancestors. Suddenly I could hear Mom's voice saying that her last job was most important of her life, even more than raising my sister and me. While thanking Melissa for her lecture I tried to say what Mom told me, and choked up with emotion. I was overwhelmed with grief, but also with joy that Mom found a way to heal her own heart while working in a prison! My mother was on her own from about age thirteen when she worked and boarded with a couple with young children before and after school. She wanted to pass the high-stakes test in Canada at the end of grade nine, so she could go to high school. During her time with that family, lots happened, including a burst appendix and time in hospital recovering from the infection and surgery. This all happened miles away from her mother and siblings in Calgary, Alberta, Can...

City Vectors by Vecteezy How are city directories useful to us researchers? Aren't they just boring lines with a few names and sometimes, addresses?  They can be so much more, but even just the name and address, and sometimes job description and place of employment is by *year* and so if you have two people of the same name, you can follow them annually, and usually sort them out once you cross-check that data with census and other records. And don't forget to search for maps of the time so you can correlate the addresses to the house or apartment, and perhaps note the place of employment as well. Sanborn maps are particularly wonderful for this since it shows the layout of the house on the lot, and indicates how large it was, and how it was constructed.  However, noting just the bare minimum information misses the real value of city directories. After you gather all the information and write your citation, scan up and down the page, whether it is organized by address or alpha...