the elusive search

Breathless
June 15, 2008

I'm seriously out of sorts. About 2 weeks after buying this house last year, one of our kids moved in with us through no fault on their part but due to waiting for the proper paperwork for a visa to move to the US. So my husband and I have never really adjusted to being in this house just the two of us. All of a sudden there is no one to share those little ups and downs of the day with. There's no spontaneous chit chat. The house is so quiet not that there was any noticeable noise before but rather the awareness someone else was in the house.

A week ago last Saturday our soon to be newest family member made the long journey here. After a couple of days they made their way to Montreal for the final hoop to jump through at least to get into the US. Now there are hoops to jump through to be able to get back into Canada but that is another story. After arriving back here they settled in awaiting the coveted visa that arrived early Monday morning. In the meantime I pulled out my genealogy binders. It's always good to have a diversion when stressed.

I'm at a pulling my hair out stage in a couple of lines. It is really bothering me because I know the information is there just that I must be looking in the wrong places. I'm not one to settle on using only internet resources either. I want the primary source aka the person was living at the time of the event and signed or there is a trusted signature at the time of the event. That means a lot of leg work and traveling as well as costs.

I opened up the binders while slightly cursing under my breath then typed in the name and did a small google not expecting to find anything. This time however, I found someone looking for information on the same person but they had one little tid bit that I didn't. It really was a minor tid bit and one that could easily be over looked but I decided to follow through. This would mean some serious leg work so in the meantime I ordered the death records for four grandparents. In Ontario you have to prove the person is dead before ordering the birth records so essentially at $22 per long form each you order the death record (here) which can be quite revealing. Then you order the birth record at $35 each and send them back a photocopy of the same death record they sent you along with a guarantee contact. So you are basically spending $57 per person for birth and death records but if you do a search before ordering any certificate tack on an additional $15. Of course the prudent genealogy researcher is going to get the marriage records as well at another $22. Are you seeing a trend here yet? Serious genealogy research is expensive. Thinking back to these 4 individuals and a total cost for information from the Office of the Registrar will cost me $158 without the expense of gas for traveling to take photos of the tombstones assuming there are tombstones which is always a crap shoot. But when I look at how much money I have already spent on these two couples ranging from ordering microfilm, traveling, getting records like wills and oh so much more, well I really don't even think I could come close to estimating the costs. I once thought about $1000 per person in my database of almost 7,000 people but now I'm thinking it is a lot more than that. But it's only a hobby!

Wrong! It an obsession as the soon to be newest member of the family found out. The question was "will you ever be finished?" The immediate answer was "No". I am at the stage where back-ups of my database and photocopies of all written work are kept off site in a safety deposit box. On site everything is backed up on three computers, three flash drives, several CDs with written work being kept in a fireproof safe unless being worked on along with two flash drives and the CDs. Sound anal? If it does see the second last sentence of the last paragraph then do the math.

Now I'm not so patiently waiting for more records to arrive :)

Garden Gnome
©2007