I Love a Puzzle
On March 6, 2020 we had our first meeting of our Genealogy Club, 8 people attended and we were all so excited, you know what happened next.
On April 2, 2021 we started our club up again. Genealogy Club is for anyone 18 and older who enjoys researching their family history or genealogy with other members of the community. We provide an overview and examples to guide in beginning research. This club provides an area to work on research, databases to use, a location to use our print resources and any resources requested from the Mid-Continent Genealogy Center. We meet on the first Friday of every month at 10am.
Typically, library programs run around in hour in length, maybe 2 if we are really having great conversation. Well, on Friday we quit at 1pm, 3 hours later, and only because I needed to leave for Springfield. When I made it back home on Sunday, I continued my research. Another attendee told my mom that she stayed up until 4am continuing her research. If you have never looked at your family history, you might not understand how someone could spend hours on it, it is addicting and very hard to walk away from. It is puzzle and if you know me even a little, you know how I love a hard puzzle.
When COVID isolation began, I started doing puzzles on my kitchen table. I stopped looking at the box to add a little more of a challenge a few years back, with the table constraints I have added another level of difficulty, only a few pieces can be turned over and viewed at a time. Little did I know how this would prepare me for my new puzzle obsession, genealogy.
There are many rabbit holes to fall into during your research, so much that you can find it hard to keep focused and organized. Mid-Continent Genealogy Center really helps with this, in fact they even offer beginning classes. Currently we are using their free printouts to help guide us and we are hoping, when the world stabilizes, to do a field trip to the center in Independence, Missouri. The two attendees I had the other day had both done some previous research, but both mentioned people that they were stuck on. We decided that would be our focus on that day. By Sunday afternoon I had discovered that my Great-great-great-great grandpa had jumped the pond and arrived in the United States in 1854, cool, but that also means things get a little hairier, so I decided to go to my grandfather’s maternal side. Married first cousins. Hmmm, okay, that explains a lot, but I only paused again because my husband wanted me to jump into his puzzle. I started researching his family history and when we went to bed that night, playing on my phone, I found the will of his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, it listed the disbursement of his slaves. Leonidas arriving from Germany in 1853 made me think I was creating a really cool puzzle, then the married cousins jumped in and I finished the night with the slave owner piece, yep, not sure if cool is the right adjective for my puzzle.
Genealogy is like having all the pieces for every puzzle in one box. If you are not careful you can find yourself working on pieces that don’t even belong in your puzzle. Structure, patience and legitimate resources are vital, again, Mid-Continent gets this, their worksheets are invaluable, and, yep, we get it too. We are currently updating our resources, spine labels for quick discovery and updated records will hopefully revive the use of our various historical records that are located in our conference room.
My kitchen table now houses my ordinary jigsaw puzzle, a laptop, and various sheets of paper, I love a puzzle and if you do to, come see us on May 7th at 10am, maybe it will save your kitchen table.
Upcoming Events: 4/14 Story Time in the Community room (masks required for adults) at 10am, 4/15 OUR Story at the Versailles Park at 4pm, 4/12 LEGO challenge on Facebook at 10:30am