Tuesday Tip - Not what your looking for? Try it anyway

My Grandmother and her Florentz/Pierre family came to the US from St. Marie Aux Mines, France  when she was 5 years old. We never knew who her grandparents were on either side only the names of her parents and the town there were from. I had searched for records in France and for others online that had the same names but to no avail. So it was dropped from my list of searches for a long while.

The other morning my mother emailed me that she had found some paper of my Grandmothers in a coin box. It did not have anything we didn't already know on it but it did prompt a thought regarding her father and his medals. Might there be a list of who received these medals and maybe some other family members received them also. The search began...

Did I find a medal list? No. But in the search for that a link popped up on Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Blog for searches in the Haute-Rhin region of France. Now this was not what I was looking for at all but I thought I would see if they had anything regarding the St. Marie Aux Mines area.

Boy did I hit the mother load! Not only did it have records for that little town, it had the year of my Great Grandfathers birth and the actual record. That listed his parents and from there I found their marriage certificate which listed both sets of parents. I looked further and found my Great Grandmothers parents marriage record and their parents names as well.

I am so happy there are those people out there willing to scan and copy these old documents and post them, especially for the years I needed them. With more searching I may even find death certificates.

Motivational Monday - Listen and Learn

One of my many goals this year is to learn more regarding genealogy. Attend more lectures and conferences and really know how to do good research.

The first meeting of the Florida Genealogy Society (Tampa) was fantastic. I started off in the computer lab with a mini session led by the very knowledgeable Pam from Technology Tamers  We learned the many ways to put watermarks on photos and documents. After that the main speaker at the meeting was Sharon Tate Moody, CGSM who spoke on "If Living Were A Crime: Evidence Your Ancestor Left at the Scene". This was a fantastic lecture and if you ever get the chance to hear her speak you should jump on it!

In all it inspired me to dig deep and look at some crazy places I never would have thought to look for evidence that my relatives were alive and connected.

Family Recipe Friday - Coffee Cake

It's interesting that this was one of the topics on Geneabloggers today as I was thinking about getting my rear in gear and writing this blog again and about my Grandmothers coffee cake.

As a little girl, my family would trek out to Deshler, Ohio to the farm where my Grandmother grew up. One of her sisters still lived there and she still made that delicious coffee cake when we visited. I remember it so well, the long strips of warm bread, cinnamon, sugar, butter what could be better? No I realize it was just a huge cookie sheet size of cinnamon toast.

When I got my hands on the written recipe it said "box of bread mix, bake, cover with sugar, cinnamon and butter". So apparently this side of the family had better things to do than bake. It was still good!