April was one of my best research months in a long time. I’ve made some really neat discoveries on my Portuguese and French lines (where are you, Irish? C’mon, step up!)
Let’s see…
I found that the town of Ogeu les bains, France has Google street view. I spent a few hours looking around town. I found the Mazeres house that has existed since the early 1800s (thanks to cousin Jean for the address!)
I found through findagrave.com that my grandfather’s cousin was featured in a project for California that photographed WWI soldiers. The project was done in 1918.
I found that a group of Pacheco Remigio’s who I’ve been trying to locate for about 5 years have a group on Facebook.
I have no photographs of my grandmother’s cousins. For whatever reason, she and her sister had nothing on the Bourne’s, Pohley’s, and Burke’s–their San Francisco cousins–despite the fact that their mother and her sisters were very close. I found that some San Francisco yearbooks are available on ancestry.com. I now know what 5 of her cousins looked like.
I started searching the records for Povoacao, Sao Miguel Island, Azores to see if I could drum up something on my ancestor’s family from the 1770s. After floundering in the marriage records, I went to the baptismals and found her had two more siblings.
A new cousin from Kilauea took photo of tombstones in the local cemetery. I know have my great great grandmother’s tombstone photo–and her death date.
And, the same cousin unknowingly sent me a photo that showed my great aunt, Minnie (Ventura) Pacheco Smith as a teenager.
I wonder why genealogy is feast or famine. At least it seems that way for me. I either spend months locating that one record to fill a gap in data or it comes in an avalanche of information from all over.
I have work to do now! I have many records to input and organize. See that smile on my face? I’m one happy genealogist.
