Ready or not....

As I mentioned in past posts we are leaving for vacation in a few days, and I am so ready... or at least I think I am... hope I am?

I'm a firm believer that in order to make best use of my research time I need a plan, I need a to do list. Where am I going? That part I know. Hotels are reserved, libraries have been questioned. So those things are in place. But what about things like cemeteries & libraries? Okay so I know how to get there, the GPS is programmed and ready but am I?

For quite some time now I've been adding to my research lists for the trip. SO I thought I would give some sort of itinerary and see if YOU, my reader can think of anything I missed... ready?

First stop - Elkhart County, Indiana public library - primary research focus will be obituaries. This library has an obituary index online - if you are interested you can google Elkhart Public Library, and I'm sure you'll find it. Anyway, I've been copying & pasting from my searches on their obit index into my to do list for that library. I know that the index covers from 1921-1952, 1962 to current. I also know they have a WPA index that covers from 1882-1900. SO I may have some obits that I need to actually search the papers for. I sent them an email and I found out that the newspapers are on the second floor and that they are not self serve, so that will slow me down a bit. I also learned that they have three film copiers but seldom are they all in use so I should be okay there. Cost is .15 per, no copy card but they do have a change machine. Not taking chances, I've been saving change for a while so I have that covered.

While I am in Elkhart I need to do some cemetery work with the info I find in the obits, so the second day, Saturday, I plan on doing some headstone photographs. The weather forecast shows warm & sunny, Camera is packed and both batteries are charged. The charger for the camera will be plugged in while we are driving to assure I have plenty of charge for my headstone work. I have the locations of all the cemeteries in Elkhart County, so that is prepared.

As we head south from Elkhart County, we are traveling down the western side of Indiana, headed for Tell City. I've gone thru the counties, working with Legacy, my genealogy software, and I've determined that we have cemeteries in many counties along the way, avoiding Indianapolis. I've mapped those out and made my lists in the Legacy software of the cemeteries I want to photograph stones in along the way. Those will be printed out & bound tomorrow (Thursday).

Skip a day or two, and we are going to be researching at the Tennessee State Library & Archives. My inquiries there indicated that copies from microfilm are .25 per page. My interest in the library & archives is their newspaper collection - I can get obits from all over the state of Tennessee without having to do all that running. The other item of interest is death certificates for Tennessee from 1908-1955. At .25 each I can do alot of work here without spending the money in my gastank. The focus will be female lines. So we will be working together but seperately here, with myself working on obituaries and Mark will be after the death certifcates. Again the focus will be on the females in the line, especially those whom we have no surname for. I've been building two lists for this research facility, one for obits and one for death certificates. Those will be printed tomorrow after a quick review later today. After three days of this we will be off again.

The last leg of our research trip will be in Ohio. Specifically the Butler & Warren County area's of Ohio. Although most of my Ohio ancestors were in Montgomery, Preble & Darke there are a few that wandered off into other counties. So for the last few days of our trip I want to focus on getting obituaries and headstone photo's of them, basically cleaning up and verifying what I know. This is what I need to work on today. My to do list for this area is the final "trip prep" that I need to do.

I'm really excited about this trip and to be honest poor studmuffin, he knows me so well, this morning he warned me about wanting to leave early. He knows from past experience that I will be "chompin' at the bit" to get out of here, and that chances are I'll try my best to get him to leave Thursday night instead of Friday morning. So he's already done his mule thing, locked himself into place and declared, "not this time you're not!"... but we shall see eh?

I guess its alot like the children say when they play hide & seek.....

Ready or not......