Family History Center Trip PAYS OFF - FOUND THINGS

Family History Center in Menlo Park, California

I had some time on Monday night and was in the area of the family history center, so I decided to drop by and play around on the premium subscriptions available.  I was looking for the obituary for my Great Grandma Madison because a cousin had asked if anyone had it.  (I didn't find it, but I haven't given up.)  I got caught in a loop of finding a bunch of information on my Grandma Madison's siblings (my dad's aunts and uncles.)  I found out so much information.  Like one of the sisters was an army nurse during WWII.

Halverson is her married name.

I found much more information that I'm not going to post all tonight, like that one of the sisters was on the yearbook, and a copy of the yearbook is available on Ancestry.com, but you do have to download it page by page.

I had some holes in my research about my great grandpa Johnson, actually a lot of my Johnson research seems lacking.  I was trying to find more about his second wife (see more below) and found this nugget on Ancestry.com through findagrave.com.

I love that it mentions siblings and others survived by him, great for further research.

Someone took the time to put in next to his grave information what appears to be a news article regarding his death.  I was very distraught last night after finding it to see that my great grandfather died falling off a building, but that my grandfather watched it happen.  This happened only 3 months after my dad was born, and about 5 months before my grandparents split up.  It has made me wonder how much this incident played into their split up.  I doubt it was the reason, but I am sure it's hard to get over watching a parent die and would complicate whatever was already going on.

One thing that seems to happen in my family is death and divorce.  My parents are divorced, my dad's parents were divorced, and his dad's parents were divorced.  It might go back further, but you get the point.  My great grandpa Johnson remarried and had a daughter.  My dad has often asked me if I have found anything on her.  He knew that she died in the 1960s and that she had 4 kids.  I was able to find some information about her last night.  I was also to verify information about her husband, and a child who has passed away through findagrave.com again.

Hats off to Cecelia McKein

Overall it was a very productive couple of hours at the family history center.  It was great to find information to flush out people.  It also has my wondering more about generations and what we are left to deal with as children, and what kinks and flaws we pass down because of emotional scars from the kinks and flaws of our ancestors.  I think we just do our best.