Sometimes when you run up against a brick wall, you may have to go a long way in a parallel or perpendicular path to get around the brick wall.  True in physics, true in life, true in genealogy. In illustration of that point, we’ve been trying for a long time to get past the brick [...]

Continue reading about The Round-About Way Around Collaterals to Your Brick Wall

I’ve written favorably about the vital records index at the Louisiana State Archives.  It’s easy to use to look up information and it’s set up to make ordering certified copies by snail mail easy.  Unlike Texas, Louisiana does not have an on-line ordering capability run by the state.  But since they make everything else so [...]

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Craig on April 28th, 2009

Finally!  Back in January, I ordered from Amzaon.com the book, Biographical & Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana, originally published in 1890 by Southern Publishing Co.   For several months, I kept getting notices from Amazon that shipping would delayed and they would give a date range during which it would ship.  All truned out to wrong [...]

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Craig on April 25th, 2009

“Was there anything in the mail today?” I ask. “Yeah, a lot of stuff.  But nothing really exciting,” she replies.  “It’s there on the table.” I look there on the table, and wade through the usual bills, sales flyers, charitable solicitations, junk mail disguised as first class mail, until I finally come to a big [...]

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Craig on March 25th, 2009

Several weeks ago, in a post called Happy Dance Days are Here Again, I posted some photographs. The photos were of Frank Gines and his wife Willie V. Cole Gines, and their children. Frank Gines (1883-1946) was a son of Richard William Gines (1860-?) and Sylvia LeJay Gines (1863-1940). One of Frank’s younger brothers was [...]

Continue reading about Why I Blog–Reason No. 1 and Reason No. 776,002

Craig on February 26th, 2009

I started this with a note on Facebook and it was suggested that it would make a good meme for bloggers.  The idea is to publicize your surnames and locales to see if anyone elseknows something about them.  For me on Facebook, I got several research-helpful replies. So how much better to take it to [...]

Continue reading about Names, Places & Most Wanted Faces

Craig on January 25th, 2009

Seems it’s been a while since we did any hard genealogy here.  The best way to handle that is simply to just jump into it.  Our subject today is one of my most resistant brickwalls. I’m going to describe my research and solicit ideas about how to proceed. So as they  used to say on [...]

Continue reading about Back to Some Hard Genealogy . . .

Craig on January 3rd, 2009

Is the honeymoon with the new year over already? I’m betting that by Monday morning, that’s what of us will be thinking! But I’ve had a good first three days! On the one hand, I missed the Carnival, which broke one of my resolutions, but it was unavoidable. Plagued by connectivity problems all week (which [...]

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Craig on January 6th, 2008

Some Lessons about Census Records Contestant #1: My name is Julia McDavid. I was born in the nineteenth century and had a daughter named Helen. Can you find me in the 1880 or 1900 census? Contestant #2: My name is Julia McDavid. I was born in the nineteenth century and had a daughter named Helen. [...]

Continue reading about To Tell the Genealogical Truth