Parks to Fit
Do you have plans for a research trip or vacation? If so, the National Park Service’s Interactive Map Center can identify parks, monuments, or historic sites that could be worth a side trip. The park locator finds sites based on search criteria, such as interest in the Revolutionary or Civil War, or cultural heritage including African, Asian, or Native American.
Traipsing through cemeteries to see the tombstone of an ancestor has been written about so frequently that the activity has to be a significant endeavor. But why? A walk through an ancestral cemetery—or even lunch or dinner in a cemetery—can enhance your family history research by providing context.
As unpleasant as air travel is today, I still do a fair bit of it. My wont is to sit by the window, either well back of or well forward of the wing, and snap pictures of clouds, lakes, cities, towns, mountains, rivers, and anything else I find interesting—when I’m not napping, that is.
The start
In 1848, sisters Kate and Margaretta Fox, preteens from Hydesville, New York, claim to speak with the dead in their reportedly haunted home. The communicator, they determine, is a ghost who answers questions via knocks and taps on a specially-designed tilting table. The spirit also, with the assistance of the Fox sisters, points to letters to spell out words.
My fortunate twist of family history fate began in summer 2004 when, ready for a career change, I accepted a job as editor of a monthly e-mail newsletter. As part of the job, I wrote articles about family history, and each of these articles landed in the newsletter’s archives. My name, Anastasia Sutherland Tyler, was attached to all of them.
My uncle’s 82nd birthday would have been September 12.
I love this picture of him. It’s been part of my parents’ home all my life, and it’s had a place in my home, too, ever since I named my oldest son, Connor Robert, after him.
Robert Gabriel Berenson, my Uncle Bob, was not just an impossibly handsome Navy pilot.
I have been planting flower bulbs this week. All winter the daffodils and tulips will lie under the ground, and it will seem like nothing is happening. But next spring, when I need flowers the very most, some will reward me with beautiful blossoms. Not all will bloom the first year. It may take two or three years for some to produce blossoms.
Ever get the feeling you’re being led?
You drive into a cemetery with no idea how to find your ancestors’ gravesites. You stop the car and step out. The tombstone of your great-great-grandmother is in front of you.
You visit a place where you’ve never been, yet unaccountably sense that you’re home.