A Can of Worms

I've never been bitten by the genealogy bug... until now.

I just finished a four-day community course on the basics of genealogy. A lot of the material was review. I don't know a lot, but know just enough to be dangerous. I was given some good tips on narrowing down searches and various websites for getting information. On the last day of class, we had some time left at the end so I just started going through my family tree on FamilySearch.org. Oh boy. I had no idea when I identified my great grandma's youngest brother as a good place to start that I would end up so entrenched in his wife's family.

The Flynn Family, ca. 1921

I dove in last night and ended up at times with way-too-many tabs open on my computer and a web of documents, dates and people. At first, there was really nothing to go by except a few census records, but from there I identified her parents and brother. Her dad was a pretty fascinating fellow who was born in Scotland and worked as a hairdresser on 5th Avenue in New York City. There are multiple source documents for her dad and it's so cool to piece his life together and learn parts of his life story from these pieces of paper. Her mom was born in Illinois so I feel a connection on both sides.

It's still in a mess and I have to sort through a lot of things to fill in some gaps in my information, but it's so fascinating! Every new discovery is so satisfying.