Follow Friday: Great Resources from new blog, Family History Tips

Today's Follow Friday posting is dedicated to Jen's Family History Tips blog. Jen's blog provides tips for finding your family history. A lot of her postings have been focused on finding Chicago ancestors, which I find very helpful, as the majority of my ancestors are from Chicago. Even though I don't live far from Chicago (and even work in Chicago), I find there are many resources I still don't know about.

My favorite posting...which was hard to choose, there were many...is Women and the Naturalization Process.

This posting describes Jen's search for a female ancestor who was repatriated, even though she was born in Chicago. Jen highlights a wonderful article and resource from KindredConnections entitled “Where are they? Finding Your Ancestors’ US Naturalization Records.” I learned that due to an act passed in 1907, a women's nationality depended on her husband's nationality. So if the husband lost or gained citizenship, so did she.

I have a female ancestor in my line to which this applies to, but I could never figure out why. Thanks to Jen's posting, I now know why.

Keep up the great posts, I know I will continue reading.

Touchdown Thursday: Finding tombstone of Paul K Joyce

I'm creating a new daily genealogy blog theme, Touchdown Thursday.

Touchdown Thursday is dedicated to those yay! and hooray! moments in my family history search....those ancestors that seem to hide from me but somehow I find....those brick walls that I can finally take down....

I'd love for you to join me on Thursdays, and tell me how you managed to tear down a brick wall, find a missing piece, hit a homerun, or score a touchdown.


This week's touchdown moment was finally finding the grave for Brenden's uncle, Paul Keith Joyce.

From his obituary and family attending his funeral, I knew he was buried in Spring Lake Cemetery in Aurora, Illinois.

• I left messages on the cemetery's voicemail 5 times (office only open a couple hours during the week) and never got a call back.
• I searched Kane County's cemetery index online and found a liitle more info....he was buried in the RG section. I took a ride to the cemetery and found all the sections marked... Except for RG section. The other sections were marked east and west, so where was this mysterious section?
• I checked online for a map, no luck.
• I tried the cemetry office, closed.
• I found an internet posting saying that RG stands for Rear Grotto. So, I took another trip to the cemetery and went to the rear. The rear of the cemetery was being renovated and there were dirt piles everywhere, I got upset thinking they had dug up Brenden's uncle!
• Brenden was also upset so he called his dad. His dad told us we were looking in the wrong section...sigh of relief....he was near the front of the cemetery about 100 yards from the fence.
• We got excited and went to take a look, it just happened to be Memorial Day weekend and Paul was a veteran.
  

Paul Joyce wasn't 100 yards from the fence near the front, as his dad had promised, he was in the middle of the cemetery in the Rose Garden (RG).

The only reason we finally found him was by searching for graves with American flags in unmarked sections of the cemetery. A lot of searching, but it finally paid off!

Touchdown, score one for me, I found Paul Keith Joyce!

Picture by Melissa Brown, May 30, 2010, Spring Lake Cemetery, Aurora, Kane, Illinois, Section: Rose Garden (RG)