I Just Love Research Road Trips, Don't You?

Wow! It's been quite a week on this research trip. I must say I am very happy with the success that we've had. I thought I'd bring you up to date on what we've gotten!

We left reasonably early on Monday, driving from Detroit down into Ohio. Our first stop was some cemeteries in Miami County, Ohio. We had not photographed the stones in Piqua, Miami County, Ohio - so we decided to start there. We went to Forest Hill - a rather large cemetery, and we had not contacted the office (we usually don't). There were 11 headstones we went in search of and found all but one. I'm not positive but its possible that person is in another cemetery as the obit & death certificate did not agree. Not a bad start to our trip I'd say!

Next cemetery was Riverside Cemetery in Troy, Miami County, where we were after 10 and we got 7 of the stones we wanted. Our final stop of the day was Highland Cemetery in Covington, Miami County - of the 14 we wanted there we got five. Disappointed but not overly concerned, alot of the cemetery was not accessible without huge amounts of walking & with the temps we have had here we opted out on that.

We had a great dinner Monday night with friends Michael from Dayton, Gale & Steve - all from the Darke County Researchers list. Steve had driven down from Michigan to research and Gale lives in Miami County. A great dinner and then conversation at Gale's.

Tuesday we spent the morning at the Dayton Public library. Using their online Obituary index I was able to put together quite a list - 10 pages of obituaries I needed from my data base. We only had two & half hours before we had to meet another group from the Darke County researcher list. We managed to get 7 of the 10 pages done. Not too bad!

After lunch we decided to go out & spend some time at a local cemetery, we were experimenting with dousing wires - we had some succcess & many laughs. Downside of this trip is that our friend Steve, had to leave after the cemetery. When he got home he discovered he had lost his wedding ring. We also experimented with the use of flour to help read stones. WOWSERS! Does this trick work! Watch for photo's probably next week on this great experiment!

Today we spent at the Garst Research library in Darke County. We were there when it opened... and man did the time fly! But then it always does when you are having fun. With several thousand surname files to go thru, family history files, court records, cemetery records and more how could a researcher NOT have success here. We found tons of stuff... to put it in perspective... copies were .15 each and my bill was $18.00 !!!!!!

Estate packets, wills, obituaries and more... The way I see it, I'll be typing until at least 2012 on this stuff. Mark is already working on the obits and some bible records we found.

I didn't break down any brick walls, but I did fill some holes - got some parents names, picked up some death dates, some burial dates, some burial locations - and had tons of laughs with some old friends & made some new friends as well.

I just love research road trips, don't you??

Happy Researching!
Karen