It’s been almost a year since I posted anything here. Can I blame retirement? I had planned a dive — deep and immediate into writing, blogging, researching.  But discovered I needed to just float for a while.  I needed to refocus and reprioritize goals. Happily, genealogy and this blog remain in the picture.

 But, in the meantime, what was I doing? Read on, if you want to know more —

My husband and I (with a happy assortment of family and friends) have traveled throughout the U.S. We’ve been to cities and parks, and national parks. We’ve stayed in hotels, apartments, and houses (such a cute one in Inglewood, Ca). We’ve eaten in lovely restaurants, crazy diners, and fast food joints — too many to recount or remember. We’ve been able to visit some of our beautiful national parks — camping, too, but not as much as I would have liked.

We traveled outside of the country. Since retirement, we’ve been to Scotland, England, Paris, Venice, Bangkok, as well as Tokyo. Last November we traveled for a month in Australia. We visited Sydney and northern New South Wales as well as Cairns in Queensland. The fires were just beginning, but not badly – that phase started after we left. We saw kangaroos, bats & more bats, and cassowaries, so many different kinds of birds and fish. I snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef. Oh yes … amazing.⁠

Was any genealogy research was accomplished?

Besides traveling as a tourist, I did manage to visit some places for family history research.  In Washington, D.C. I stepped into the National Archives and put my hands on family records, namely military pensions and service records. In Springfield, Illinois, I made it to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Finally… I only live a few hours away …

Cleon Elmer’s 1845 Store Account

There, I opened a store ledger from Hancock County, Illinois (think Nauvoo and Mormons and the 1840s). And I found evidence placing Cleon Elmer, my x3 great-grandfather, right there at that time and place. The records were from a store where he shopped and showed when and what he bought. I was giddy with excitement. Nerdy, I know.

In Australia, I stayed alert for anything about convict history. We have, at least, one Australian convict in the family. Braving the left-sided traffic, my husband drove us into northern New South

Wales to reconnect with the land those ancestors helped to settle. We visited the town of Paterson, and located farmland worked and owned by family. And, of course, burial grounds. Our time in Paterson was one of many highlights of our month down under.

Now what? More frequent postings here and more writing & more research.

My goal is to post about family history on this blog, 4Family-History. Weekly. It will remain centered on the four family lines of my children. Much as before. Just more frequently.

I plan to continue researching our family history. I’ll research other families when such projects come my way. And, of course, I will be writing up the research. Some of those write-ups will be published here.

You are welcome to join me, here, as I adventure into the past, into old records, into musty archives, and into those modern and gleaming and still welcoming national, state and private archives.