Thankful Thursday: Thankful for My Brother Allen

Allen Leslie
One of the best big brothers a genealogist
could have!

OK, OK, so I'm a day late with a Thankful Thursday Daily Blogging Prompt from GeneaBloggers.I've been away from the blog for awhile, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.Thanksgiving, which we celebrated a few weeks ago, is of course a time to be thankful for all the good things we've received in life, but this year I had  special reason to be thankful. While I was visiting with my brother Allen and his family over the holiday, I asked him for copies of my parents' death certificates, in hopes of clearing up some conflicting information over their birth and death dates. As I was leaving, he presented me with a fat manilla folder stuffed with not only my parents' death certificates, but also their birth certificates, their original (civil) marriage license, a certificate documenting their marriage in the Catholic Church, and baptismal certificates for my mother and maternal grandmother, among other things. "I put in a few extras," he said nonchalantly.

The biggest surprise of all however, was a large white envelope containing a generous selection of my paternal grandmother's poetry. I knew that Grace Moffatt Leslie, or "Mother Grace," as my Dad called her, wrote poetry, but I didn't know that such a large quantity of it survived. Most of the sheets are typewritten and many are dated, so we know exactly when they were composed.There are also a couple of notepads worth of handwritten notes and drafts, but the handwriting looks like a painful crabbed scrawl. My grandmother suffered from chronic, debilitating arthritis for much of her adult life, and I think as the disease progressed, it must have been increasingly difficult for her to write by hand. I plan to read the poems, scan them, and post digital images of the best ones on the blog in the very near future.

By now, it should be obvious that I am very thankful for my brother Allen and his willingness to preserve these priceless family documents and make them available to me. Thank you, Allen!

Thankful Thursday: Happy To Be Here

Thankful Thursday is another daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers. I'm back after a long, unintended hiatus, and that's what I'm thankful for today.

My genealogy research seemed to be cracking along in June and July, and then in August some things came up that brought everything to a more or less screeching halt: work for my church that had to be completed on a deadline and remodeling and renovation to my apartment: new siding on the building, new kitchen cabinets, new sinks, a new coat of paint, and new flooring. Oh, and by the way, I'm also thankful that a minor medical problem that I was concerned about turned out to be only a minor medical problem.

With all that going on, it was hard to concentrate, and then I had to remember where I left off and get back into the swing of things— but it's all coming back to me now. I'm unofficially collaborating with Sharon Leslie Morgan, author of the Our Black Ancestry blog to research James E. Leslie, my great-great grandfather, and the man she believes to be our common ancestor. Earlier this week at her request, I wrote letters to the church James E. belonged to and to the Lowndes County Alabama tax assessor's office requesting information about the man. Next, I'll write to the county courthouse in Hayneville to see what legal records I can find. Earlier today Sharon pointed me to James E. Leslie's Confederate military record on the Fold3 website. The record confirmed her belief that James E. came to Alabama from Iredell County, North Carolina, so we have a new place to hunt for records. I'm back on the trail of my ancestors, and it feels good!

Thankful Thursday: Thankful for The Internet

This is my first post using the series of daily blogging prompts available at GeneaBloggers.com. When I saw that one of the prompts for today was "Thankful Thursday," I just had to write this one because it's so easy.

I'm thankful for the Internet.

I have a disability and some related health problems that make working and even getting out of the house occasionally quite a bit more challenging than they would otherwise be. Going to genealogy conferences, the state archives, the local genealogical society, or even the county courthouse to do research would all require some careful planning and forethought. With a computer and an internet connection, however, many of the challenges of logistics and transportation: "How am I gonna get from here to there?" are substantially reduced, if not completely eliminated.

 On sites such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org I can surf through millions of records and discover surprising things about my family from the comfort and privacy of my own home and easily integrate my findings into my genealogy database software. I can upload my family tree, complete with notes and documentation, to the Web so that family, friends, and other researchers can see what I've found no matter where I am and no matter where they are. Via e-mail I can communicate with genealogists across the country or around the world. If I listen to genealogy podcasts, I can get tips and advice from experts in the field, almost as if I were fortunate enough to hear them speak in person. Barriers of time and distance seem to shrink when I use the 'net. While I know that nothing can take the place of a face-to-face meeting with another human flesh and blood human being, and that not every record I might need will be in an online database somewhere, I also know that the internet and its resources give me powerful tools I've never had before. For that I am profoundly grateful.