Nancy's Missed Interview

What if Nancy Drew missed an interview opportunity?  Would she have had the facts she needed to solve the mystery?  Would the mystery have been easier if she had only asked the right questions?

Every genealogy research guide will tell you to begin with two things: 1) Start with yourself and work your way backwards, and 2) Interview all of your elderly relatives.  I must admit that I severely overlooked the second step.  There were so many times that I could have asked my grandparents questions, and I didn't.  Case in point: The famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde killed Doyle Johnson in Temple, Texas on December 25, 1932.  Mr. Johnson lived at 606 S. 13th Street.  According to the 1930 census, my grandfather lived at 1305 S. 45th Street.  It was perhaps a mile away.  During a visit to my grandparents, the thought crossed my mind to ask my grandfather if he remembered this (he would have been about 11 at the time).  That entire visit, I never asked.  Sadly, that opportunity to ask ended almost 4 years ago.  I also never thought to ask him about his service in the army during WWII.  Only in his obituary did I find out that he had been awarded the EAME Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with 1 Bronze Star, a Good Conduct Medal and Victory Ribbon with 1 Service Stripe, and 4 Overseas Service Bars.

I am determined to not let any remaining opportunities to pass away.  I've no doubt that certain relatives find me nosy.  Others are happy to share their memories and will write pages of information for me.  I still kick myself for not asking my grandfather about Bonnie and Clyde, among many other questions, but it has given me the guts to ask some rather personal questions to people.  And with the determination of Nancy Drew, I will not miss any more interviews.

Stratemeyer's Rule No. 1: End each chapter with a cliffhanger

Genealogy research can easily become an obsession.  Countless hours may be spent just finding basic details about one person.  Before you know it, you have pages upon pages of facts and notes all over the room.  Hand-drawn family trees are scattered about, and you bookmark every web page you come across that mentions an ancestor's name.  The image of every census record you find is copied to a folder on your desktop named "Genealogy", and you soon realize that you have more pictures of census pages than you do of your child's entire life!

And for every ancestor you find information about, you usually have to add two more people (parents) to the list of people to research.  The questions and the searching never seem to stop!  My solution is to keep a plain, spiral notebook and write down any questions I think of in it, and to follow Stratemeyer's rule: End each chapter with a cliffhanger.  What fun is it to find all the answers and leave no cliffhangers?  Aren't the cliffhangers what kept us up all night trying to finish a Nancy Drew story?  And weren't we so excited when we finished that particular story that we just had to get the next book?  So, too, is genealogy research. 

Leave each section of the research with a cliffhanger, and you'll be excited to start the next part.

"Mysteries!" Ned exclaimed, turning out the lantern.  "Haven't you had enough of them?"

Nancy was sure she never would have.  Soon an intriguing invitation would involve her in another baffling mystery, The Clue in the Old Album (Mystery of the Tolling Bell, 181).

Just like the ending of a Nancy Drew story, so is family genealogy.  Once you solve one mystery, there is another waiting for you.  And like Nancy, you will never have enough.


*For interesting background information on the Nancy Drew series, check out Melanie Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the women who created her from your local library.

Nancy Drew 59: The Secret in the Old Lace

Many years ago, my grandmother gave me two old doilies made by my great-grandmother.  I put them in a shadow box, placed some biographical information about my great-grandmother on the back, and hung them on my living room wall.  We're in a different house, but they're still on the living room wall. 

When my grandmother gave them to me, I began to do genealogical research.  Needless to say, I didn't get very far.  I was an undergrad, busy writing all those college papers!  What little research I did was stuffed in a box, which was then moved to four different abodes.

In the meantime, a little boy came along, then graduate school work in library science, followed by a little girl.  It was in choosing that little girl's name that a renewed interest in genealogy surfaced (also helped that I had developed an interest in reference materials and information searches in library science).  I got to choose her name since my husband had chosen our boy's name.  While thinking about names, I looked at those old doilies on the living room wall: Kate!  We should name our little girl after my great-grandmother! 

Then came another mission: truly research our family's genealogy.  Have it not only for my own interest in history, but so that our future generations can have it.  So that my Kate can know more about her great-great-grandmother Kate.

This, then, is my story and journey of family research, Nancy Drew style.  Using what I learned in library science to help solve the family mysteries.