Residence

I've spent the past few days digging around in our flower gardens. We bought this house two & half years ago. The idea of having our "dream house" - a place where we could plant flowers and landscaping, tear out walls, paint or wallpaper and then be able to live with it, enjoy them for as long as we wanted just really worked for us.

Prior to owning this house we rented for quite a while. We had sold our house in Florida, the state of my birth, in order to move here so Mark could be close to his father. Anyway, in renting I put in flower beds - and beautiful plants, just to have to hear later that the tenant after me dug them up in order to make a sandbox for her kids to play in. Luckily I did bring some of the plants with me, but when I think of trading beautiful flowers for a sandbox.. well you can imagine my thoughts.

Having a "residence" of my own, an address that is mine, ALL MINE, is really a good thing. Or at least I think so. Of course I share it with studmuffin but that's a good thing too!

For the past few years I've been using the fact type RESIDENCE in my genealogy software as well. Alot of people put the information for residence in their notes and that's fine too! I like it as a fact and here's how I see it.

When I find an obituary that gives a, "...lives in blah blah..." or when I see a census that has a street name in the margin, I record those along with the date that it stated that person was there. For the one found in the obituary it would be the date of the obituary, for the census it would be the census date.

By establishing this residence, it makes it easier for me to tie them to some place. When I am searching for death location and I see one that matches to that location, It immediately narrows down the search field for me. It helps to know that address for locating nearby cemeteries where they might have chosen to be buried. It at least gives me a starting point.

City directories can be used to follow up and confirm the residence. Several years ago I was looking for John & Anna Dute Krugman in Lorain County, Ohio. After many trips thru the census looking for them, I finally took a second look at their group sheet and there was the word "RESIDENCE"... I had an address!

By searching for them by address on the census (still a lot of work) I managed to find them. They were enumerated as Kauffman rather than Krugman but there they were - all the children and right where they had always been. Without that Residence I think I might still be searching for them!

I've found this RESIDENCE fact to be a good thing many times over. I've even added "RESIDENCE" to my living relatives. On the personal side, I've added RESIDENCE to my parents and to myself & Studmuffin. To our Residence fact I've added all the homes I've lived in with my parents & with studmuffin, and attached photo's of the homes as well. Seeing as some of those homes are no longer standing having those photo's is a very good thing!

We sure are enjoying our residence here in Michigan. Now if all that green in flower beds would just start to get some color.... top photo is a peony from our front flower bed. Its a beautiful thing...