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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The proof is in the…documents


Once again I find that I am sitting in my house and waiting with baited breath for the post to be delivered.  Anxious, excited, thrilled to be proven wrong or right.  Whatever the emotions are which sit just under the surface of my calm facade... they are driving me crazy!  Can you tell that I, once again, have ordered records from far off places?

Several weeks ago I found on Family Search the indexes for the births of my husband 2nd great grandmother, Augusta Jahnke and her sister Henrietta along with her mother and biological father’s marriage record.  Last Wednesday I received her sister Henrietta’s birth certificate in mail from the New York City Municipal Archives.  Just 2 more to go and then maybe, just maybe I will have the proof for my conclusion.  Will I have to stop calling her by the name Jahnke and change it to Heinreitz?

Hopefully early in December I will have the research sewn up on this family unit and I can post all about it.  It has been a great mystery to unravel, so go back and read about what I have posted up to now here and here.  Hope you have liked following along all this time.

Yesterday I received the marriage certificate for my mother’s parents in the mail.  The nice gentleman at the county clerk’s office didn’t even charge me for it since it was the only record I needed.  You see, they eloped across the state line.  It is literally the only document I think I will ever need from that county, but, of course, one day I could have to eat those words.

With this document I can now start putting together my mom’s application to lineage societies.  Seriously, I was waiting on my grandparent’s marriage certificate that was it.  Visiting over the holidays is going to be so much fun! I hope her hand doesn’t get tired from all the writing.

Little mailbox treasures are so amazing.  At least this time my kids weren’t with me when I got the mail.  I didn’t have to suffer through the “my mom is so weird” looks again.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for writing this. I was just thinking that I needed to write more posts about ordering, receiving, and using more original documents for research purposes. You have captured all of that in this one post. I think it is a great reminder of how important and fun it can be to use original documents!

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    Replies
    1. You are welcome! I love getting gems like this in the mail, particularly since there is not way I can just hop on over to places my family is from. 8+ hours one way is not a little trip.

      Original documents are a must, when you can get them. It is amazing what you can get from them, all the footnotes and marginalia that comes with them. Plus having real signatures. The older the cooler!

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