Last night was the 4th and final in a series of presentations on genealogy and family research at the Wilbraham Public Library. Without a doubt, this was the best turnout I’ve had yet.

Two things struck me:

1) Except for the last night (the Monday after the “Nemo” storm) there were more and more participants as the weeks went by.
2) Everyone seemed to pay close attention, asked meaningful questions, and took notes!

I hope to be able to repeat the series in Wilbraham sometime in the May–June timeframe.

We covered all sorts of subjects: Vital records, census records, name variations, reading “ancient” handwriting, city directories, ship’s manifests, dozens of genealogy websites, what records to trust and what records to take with a “grain of salt”. I was able to share a few of familly relics that don’t seem like much, but mean a lot to me because of how I came about acquiring them. For example, my Grandmother and then my Aunt Gert had a very old velvvet box full of spoons. The family myth was that they were crafted from the silver buckles of the Plymouth Colony pilgrims. Well, 2 problems with that. It is unlikely that the buckles on any pilgrims shoes—if they had buckles—were not made of solid silver! Secondly, they are stamped “1848” along with the name of the silversmith who manufatured them. But there’s a neat story here. In the box of ephemera, there’s a letter written in 1887 from “Auntie Perham” to “Frankie”. I cannot pin down the exact identity of “Auntie Perham”, but “Frankie” was certianly my 2nd great grandmother, Frances (Bailey) Tuggey. Auntie Perham was very upset about the spoons that she sent to Frankie on the express train and she hadn’t heard back from Frankie as to whether she had received them or not. She had heard of a train wreck in West Springfield and, at the time, was convinced the spoons were on that train and possibly lost forever. Well, I looked at Genealogy Bank for a train accident around that time frame. Sure enough, a week before the letter was written, there was a horrible freight train wreck in the freight yards in West Springfield. There were several injuries and one death, according to the article. I don’t have the response from “Frankie” back to “Auntie Perham”, but I do have the spoons!

Shipped to Enfield, Massachusetts from Oswego, New York in 1887