WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT
BY GAYLE STUART
“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.” – Charles Dickens
This is probably the thought of many of us right now, when all of us here in the Midwest are very tired of the snow, cold weather, wind and very little sunshine. It can make us all feel out of sorts.
Over this past weekend, March 28-31, we had company, a cousin from Minnesota, who was looking for a warmer place without snow. They left home with about 3 feet of snow still on the ground. After a good visit, we went to Kearney, Nebraska to see the sandhill cranes. They then continued going south from there. They were hoping to make contact with another cousin, from our mothers’ side of the family, in Santa Fe.
Talking with my youngest brother, in northern Wisconsin, I learned that they had 19 inches of snow April 2-4. Where the wind blew, he had 4-foot drifts to plow through. We can be thankful we did not get that. My sister in western Minnesota said they had about 1 inch of snow at the same time.
Maybe this is a time to look at the work we are doing on our family trees. Is there something that we are not finding? Could there have been more children we didn’t know about? Many families had children die young and the ones gone were not talked about.
I have found 2 children that died young in my grandfather’s family before they left Denmark. I never heard them mentioned while I was growing up. I only found them by going page by page in old church records. A clue that some may have died is when a longer space of time comes between children; 2 years was an average span.
A friend of mine and fellow researcher for the Family History Center in Elk Horn, Iowa and I are getting ready to give a program on how to start doing your family tree and how to use a number of Websites found on your computer. This is a program that is very basic, but we have had good reports from previous times we have given it.
I hope spring comes soon, so we can all get outside to work our flower beds, walk cemeteries or to just sit in the sunshine.
gbs