Saturday, December 2, 2006

A good day at the library

While Linda was shopping and enjoying lunch with her friend on Friday, I was able to sneak in 5 hours of genealogy research at the Carlsbad Library. Carlsbad is about 35 miles north of San Diego, so I don't get there very often. The genealogy collection takes the whole second floor of the Cole Library, and they always have many new books - both surname and locality - and periodicals on the shelves.

I found only two books on my "books I want to review" list in the catalog, so I started with them. There were several entries for Seaver people in the Boston cemetery records. I went browsing and found that they had the second volume of the Bristol County (MA) probate records, for 1745-1780 (I think, I don't have my notes handy). I used Volume 1 last year to track down the abstracts and the probate record volumes for many Bristol County ancestors. Perusing Volume 2, I found data for another 6 ancestors, so now I can order the records at the FHC next time I visit there.

Having had some success browsing, I looked then for Plymouth County probates, and found a book that covered up to about 1690. I used my list of Plymouth County ancestors (including those who were in areas now in other counties) to determine if they had probate records, and the probate record volume/page numbers for them. Many of these were transcribed in "The Mayflower Descendant" volumes in the early 20th century, and those references were noted also.

Now I need to update my lists of Bristol and Plymouth County ancestors to get the right probate volume/page info and to update my status of the search - whether I have copied the pages and if I have transcribed them.

Lastly, I had not reviewed the last year of the periodicals at the Carlsbad library, so I took some time browsing through many that I don't subscribe to - like NYGBR, GSNJ, Western PA, RI Roots, Cape Cod, etc.

Then it was off to find Linda, check into the hotel, take a nap, have a nice dinner, watch TV, post a blog item, and snuggle a bit. Today, we got up late, had a nice late breakfast, took a ride around Carlsbad, ended up at the beach where we walked and got our feet wet (it was 75 F today), watched the kids and dogs at a park, and came back to the hotel. Linda is in the pool while I blog, and a nap beckons, I think.

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