WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT
BY GAYLE STUART
GENEALOGY: A haystack full of needles. It’s the threads I need.
Over Father’s Day week-end, we had the pleasure of having company from Oklahoma. They are 2nd cousins of my husband, Leo, and of his brother, Robert. These people over the years have been known as the South Stuarts. Leo’s grandfather, John, was a brother to their grandfather, Donald. John and Donald came to the Walnut area in the 1870’s and bought land. John was east of town, where we live now, and Donald was south of town. The farm south of town is where Bob Gross now lives at 50507 Sumac Road. Donald left Walnut around 1910 and went to Oklahoma.
It was fun to go to the Catholic Cemetery and show Doug and Monica all the family stones and tell Doug how they were all related to him. (Monica enjoyed walking the streets in town during the Antique Walk.) When you have visitors and start going over all your research and see how it all connects, you’re glad you have census, church records, land records, a few newspaper articles and hand written material to prove it all fits. (Doug is a lawyer, so he needs proof.) Some of the Stuart threads are connecting with another branch of the family. There are many missing yet.
On Sunday, we had as many of the family that could, gather at our home to enjoy a meal and visit. It was fun to see how they all visited and how the younger generation tried to piece it all together.
We all have needles that we are trying to find the threads to connect.
When a number of us work at the library, in the backroom, on Tuesday afternoons, we try to pull the threads together for other people. There are times when we don’t have much more than a name to work with. Our 1st step is to find them in a census, if we can, to know if they lived here at the time when a census was taken. By using Heritage Quest and Ancestry, we can usually locate them. We use obits, old newspapers and old annuals to find other threads. If anyone has old Walnut annuals and doesn’t know what to do with them, we would gladly take them for the WGS room at the library. It is always fun to see someone else connect with some of his or her threads.
If anyone is having trouble finding connections with family, we would be glad to try our luck on it for you.
gbs