With the new year come another 52 weeks to blog on our genealogy adventures, prompted weekly by Amy Johnson Crow's long-running series, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. The questions in this prompt are: "Who was the first person you wanted to find when you began your genealogy journey? Was there a family member who sparked your interest, perhaps by giving you a treasure trove of genealogy 'stuff'?"
The family member who sparked this interest . . . h'mmm, let's go ahead and call it what it is: obsession . . . was my late sister-in-law, Kathy [Allred] Packard. She was of the LDS persuasion, and my brother converted to that faith in their marriage. She had traced things all the way back to the original immigrant, who came from Suffolk to the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and who sparked my interest, in Amy Johnson Crow's words, and who was the focus of my budding research.
My research, however, soon revealed that the derivative sources Kathy had depended on had errors. I set about to investigate and, I hoped, correct the errors. So the subsequent 40 years since have been an interesting journey. I took courses by mail and online from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They were offering a non-degree course of study through the Faculty for Information Studies, the virtual outlet for course offerings through the University of Toronto. The completion of this course of study earned the participant a certificate of completion rather than a degree, as the courses were all non-credit courses. My area of study under this program was in American Records. The instructors for these courses are either certified genealogists or Ph.D.s in their fields.
I attended what conferences I could, what with work, family responsibilities, and an often-limited budget. I have been able in recent years to attend webinars and conferences virtually, which is wonderful, as my travel options are limited (I can't fly due to medical issues), and a serious illness of one of our children limits our budget.
One of the exercises for one of the classes from the National Institute was to find relatives you hadn't had previous contact with. I found out that my father's line, surname Packard, had gone into Canada from Massachusetts. Richards Packard, my fourth-great-grandfather, fought in a couple of Massachusetts regiments in the American Revolution. I obtained his Revolutionary War pension file and found out a great mass of information about him, and a good deal less about his wife, Sarah "Sally" Coates/Coats, including where in Canada they settled. I placed an advertisement in the local newspaper in the area of Canada where Richards Packard had settled. The ad was answered by a non-relative, a member of the Georgeville, Quebec, Historical Society who put me in touch with my Canadian cousins. We corresponded for a while, but with all the sturm und drang of getting old, problems and difficulties of one sort and another, we fell out of touch.
But I learned a good deal more about my family history. The adventure since has turned up a collateral relative from the Revolutionary period who for some reason, turned his coat and became a "rascally Tory." I found that a family related on my mother's side is also related on my father's side, kinda like what people say here in the south where I grew up: "I'm so southern, I'm related to myself."
I'm looking forward to more discoveries.
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