Salt Lake City in December

 

by Pa Rock

Family Historian

Much of the time that I spent at the computer during the early years of my retirement was focused on genealogy.  The first big task was getting my old genealogy newspaper columns ("Rootbound in the Hills") typed into the computer, indexed, and finally printed into book form.  It was a massive undertaking (over 240 individual columns with thousands of surnames), but when the chore was completed the columns were preserved and available for research in several local libraries and two national genealogical libraries, and my children each had copies to pass on to their descendants.  

After that I researched my own personal ancestors and published profiles of them in this blog, and spent an abundance of time tracing and writing about the descendants of one of my 19th century ancestors on whom I had extensive information due to records from an old court case.  The original family surname was "Smith," and I thought that by carefully sifting through a few generations of their descendants, I might not only learn more about many of my distant cousins, but also provide some helpful material for future family historians who are researching a "Smith," the most common family surname in the United States.  I titled that collection of blog-postings "One Smith Family."

Now I have separated all of those old blog profiles into three separate collections:  my father's lineage ("The Macy Family"), my mother's lineage ("The Sreaves Family") and "One Smith Family," and am finally ready to begin a final proof-reading, filling in gaps, and getting them ready for publication.  To do that most effectively - for the peace and quiet as well for the ready availability of a world-class family research facility - I am preparing to head to Salt Lake City for six full days of research and work at the Family Search Library (commonly known as the Mormon Library).  I will be staying next door to the library at the Plaza Hotel.

I made that same trip in 2018 and had an extremely good research experience - and I hoping that this excursion will be even more productive. The trip is planned and booked for December 15th through the 22nd, and it will hopefully knock three more things off of my bucket list.

And I suspect that Salt Lake City will be a very nice perch from which to enjoy the holiday season.