Amazing week for genealogy!

This has been quite a week! Over the weekend my aunt visited and she lent me some photos and documents, which I scanned. She has the most amazing collection of family information. I still can't believe some of the things she has! I am so grateful that she shared it with me. I even found the name of the town in Germany that one of my great-great-grandmothers was born in. Now if I could just read it! I also borrowed my father's baby book, and my grandmother put information in there about other family members that will be very helpful.

Then a couple of days ago I finally found a little more information on one of my ancestors who has been a man of great mystery to me for quite some time. I still need much more information, but at least I have more to go on and have learned a little more about his life. This man probably died by 1820, so you can imagine how challenging it has been to track down information on him.

Then late last night I got an e-mail. I recently did some research on an ancestor's sister and found out who she married, who her children were, and when she had died by. I posted the information to a mailing list for the surname. Another researcher contacted me. Because of what I found and posted, she looked for some more information. Although she did not find anything that is obviously directly related to this family group, what she found should be very helpful for cluster research, which I think will be needed in this case. Researchers have been trying to identify the parents for quite some time. We know the mother's first name but not her maiden name, and the man that was supposedly the father may not have actually existed. There is a theory about who the father was, but there is not sufficient evidence yet to support this conclusion.

Then today I got a message on ancestry.com. Someone found the immigration records for the family of another one of my German ancestors (the major brick wall side, not the side my aunt had the information on). I have been looking for this for quite some time. I even found out the name and gender of another of the children. I had only known (from a letter that my grandmother wrote to my uncle about family history) that there was a baby that died on the way over and was buried at sea.

What a week! And it's not even over yet!