Saturday, April 11, 2009

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Easter Egg Hunt!!!

It's Saturday Night, let's have some genealogy fun!

Remember those Easter egg hunts you had when you were a kid? Or you hosted when you were a parent or grandparent of small children (or even big children...)? Remember the happiness and joy you had finding the eggs hidden in the garden or the field? And the goodies sometimes found inside them? I'm really looking forward to the Easter egg hunt in our backyard for Lolo and her friend Abigail on Sunday morning.

I have a Genealogy Easter Egg Hunt for you! Here's the directions:

1. Pick a place that you have ancestry, but don't know much about.

2. Go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and put in the place name, the state name, and the words "genealogy" and "society." For example my search string is going to be [mccook nebraska genealogy society]. Don't use mine - use your own!

3. Go to the web site that looks the most interesting or promising, and search for data about your ancestor(s) that lived there.

4. Did you find anything new or interesting? If so - those are your genealogy Easter Eggs! Enjoy them - browse some more! If not, try again with another place name.

5. Tell us all about it on your blog, or in comments to this blog.

Happy hunting!!! I will show off my genealogy Easter Eggs on Sunday (if I find any... I hope I've been a good little graveyard rabbit).

7 comments:

Terri said...

How funny you picked McCook Nebraska - my uncle grew up in McCook - small world........

Hosting said...

So Funny to read your article

Unknown said...

HAPPY EASTER AND HAPPY EGG HUNTING TO ALL :-)

TAKE A BREAK - READ A SHORT STORY.

THE PHENOMENON CALLED LIFE THROUGH MY COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES ... http://lifeshortstory.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/pushing-the-papers/

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

I am, of course reading, this as usual on Sunday morning. As it happens I played along last night too, without knowing it. Of course not knowing the rules I searched for Muncie library. They have some documents online and in a divorce proceeding I found the information to punch through a brickwall.

Happy Easter! Happy Dance!

Anonymous said...

Not too many Easter Eggs in Otsego County, New York with the surnames Dyer, Fisher or Ackley. I picked a non-New England area for my hunt since N.E. isn't well known for its county resources. We tend to be more town centered.
I've eliminated a lot of potential sources today. I searched most of the links on the USGenWeb site for the county, such as http://theusgenweb.org/ny/otsego/resources/ocsurgat.htm. There is some possibility that I'll find something in the Dower Books at the Otsego Surrogate Court--they cover the right years.
I also located great online pathfinders for each NY county on the New York State Historical Association site - library.NYSHA.org-- and the names and addresses for the Town Historians in Otsego County. I also found some Ackleys in the Guardianship records, but I've no idea that they have a connection to my Prudence who married Samuel Dyer about 1805. Eleazer Fisher's daughter Eliza married Samuel and Prudence's son, Darwin Erasmus Dyer 12 June 1826. I'm looking for documentation for all these folks. Hope you all found more eggs with your desired surnames than I did. I did learn about the county resources!!!
Marnie, who can't remember her Google password.

Terry Thornton said...

RANDY, I went on your egg hunt. Looked in three places.

1. Typed in Pittsburg Oklahoma Genealogy Society and found lots of new information about the county where my grandparents Thornton once lived. Nothing really excitingly new re: Thorntons except for one name that I've got to research further.

2. Typed in Calhoun County Mississippi Genealogy Society where my grandparents Hollingsworth lived. Found some information but nothing new --- but was very pleased to see CCGS getting its act together online.

3. Typed in Monroe County Mississippi Genealogy Society where I grew up, where my parents lived and died, and where almost all of my great- grands Hollingsworth, Nix, Weaver, Howell, etc lived and died. What a bummer. Not an online presence to speak off --- it is as if the MCGS doesn't exist --- certainly not online.

Anyway a fun egg hunt. But I didn't find the golden egg. Did you?

Terry Thornton
Hill Country of Monroe County Mississippi (blog)

Cousin Russ said...

Randy - I posted a message yesterday that I had posted my blog. But I don't see my comment here.

http://worthy2be.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-easter-egg-hunt/

Thank you for the Challenge.

Russ