Summer is a great time to travel to the old home places and distant repositories. What's your first step?  Create Your Plan The longer your trip and farther away your destination, the more preparation you will need. Are passport, visa, special vaccinations required? Early on, write away for maps; some are available for free but arrive by mail; good local maps will help in the planning process. How about connections with researchers in the localities you will visit? Join some local societies, and start conversations with the local history groups, libraries, colleges, courthouses, archives and museums. Create a spreadsheet or table to gather names, contact information, closed dates, hours of operation. Before you leave, print your itinerary and the info sheet. Leave a copy at home with friends and family, too.  Prepare short biographies of ancestors who lived locally to leave in vertical files in libraries and archives. Ensure that each bio has your contact information; if...

In 2030 I'll turn 77, so it seems a good time to think ahead! Are you laying plans for the next decade? Please write about your plans in the comments. Barbara's challenge last week is what prompted this blog. Please read her blog if you haven't done so yet! Past I began asking family for information about their family and ancestors in the late Seventies. There were no private computers back then, and I doubt that the word "genealogy" was in my vocabulary. By the Eighties, I was writing letters to relatives and including a stamped, self-addressed envelope (remember those?) and Family Group Sheets. I still have many of those in my first genealogy notebook. A few lovely family members included money along with their answers! By the Nineties, I was online (sort of) and using genealogy lists such as Roots-L . I joined the South King County Genealogy Society sometime in the Nineties; unsure exactly when. The Society was meeting at the United Methodist churc...

By Linda Blais At our June meeting, Mary Kathryn Kozy gave us some practical tips for preparing to take a genealogy research trip.  Listening to Mary brought back memories of the last research trip I took to North Carolina and Tennessee with my cousin who acted as my research assistant. It also brought up some "aha" or "oops" moments on a couple of things that didn't go quite as planned, even though I had spent months preparing my itinerary. Here are some basics about the trip. My goal was to visit as many historical sites, libraries, museums, courthouses and archives as I could in 10 days that were relevant to the life of Sarah Barton Murphy, who lived in North Carolina as a child between 1753 and 1760 and in Tennessee as an adult between 1781 and 1802.  She is not my ancestor, but I am in the process of writing a biography about her. Her claim to fame is that she founded the first Sunday school west of the Mississippi in 1805. The research I do for an anc...

By Barbara Mattoon My daughter-in-law, Michele Mattoon, and I had long planned a trip to the Yakima Valley Genealogical Society Library in Union Gap, Washington, to research the Mattoon family.  Because my son Eric is a student of wine, and particularly Washington wine, we decided to combine our genealogy research trip with wine tasting in the Yakima Valley. On Thursday, July 16, 2015, we embarked on the trip. Our first stop was  Lake Mattoon on the outskirts of Ellensburg.  Michele had planned it to be a surprise for me, but I had discovered Lake Mattoon just a few days previously while researching my father-in-law’s younger brother, Buzz Mattoon.  It is a very small lake, clearly visible from the I-90 freeway. From Lake Mattoon we traveled south – southeasterly on Hwy 82 over Manastash and Umtanum ridges to Yakima and Union Gap. After several wrong turns we arrived at the Library.  We were warmly greeted by knowledgeable volunteers and were able to...