A New Year's Wish List and then some

Martin Hollick, over at The Slovak Yankee, recently made some New Year's resolutions.  As a fellow New Englander I can identify with his desire to start the New Year in September rather than January 1st.  Whether a student or a mother, I've always felt September was a time of renewal and new beginnings.  Honestly, January 1st in New England does not provide a whole lot of inspiration for re-energizing and re-calibrating.  For me, January is all about hot chocolate, warm blankets and snuggling.

In support of Martin's sentiments I've decided to list my own September New Year's Resolutions for my personal genealogical research.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS:

• Prioritize my family research goals to establish a Top 10 list of ancestors to research
• Create brief bios for those ancestors complete with footnotes.
• Scan and digitally file all old family photos then place them on CD to share with family members
• Revitalize my Edwards Family blog and add to it weekly
• Plan another research trip to the ancestral homestead in New York with my Dad
• Learn to use technology better to aid in the discovery and sharing of my family research

How about some weekly goals?!!

After reading Martin's post I read another intriguing one at the blog "Finding Josephine."  The  most recent blog post lays out weekly goals.  These are different from resolutions in that they should be realistically attainable during one week.  Finding Josephine lists three goals for the week. For myself, I think I will choose just one.

GOAL FOR THIS WEEK:  Do a survey of the records available for Bath, Maine from 1750 - 1860.  This will be background information that will allow me to create a research plan for my ancestor, David Turner Shaw.

Time to get to work!

Hooray for the Town Clerk

Hooray for the Town Clerk. No, not the one in Ohio who just sent you a certified copy of your great grandfather’s birth record. Hooray for David Turner Shaw (1764-1856), Town Clerk of Bath, Maine. He became Town Clerk in 1803 and served for more than forty years. Town Clerks are a devoted, meticulous bunch of people. They are committed to accuracy and correctness. And for this I will be forever grateful.

In May 2005, I posted a message to the Shaw surname board on Ancestry.com looking for information about my ancestor, David Turner Shaw. David was one of ten children, most of whom were born in Massachusetts. David and two of his siblings were born after their parents migrated to Bath, Maine. I had little proof of the connection between the Massachusetts and Maine born children.

In August 2009, four years after my original post, I received notification of a response from Ancestry.com. It came from Ann Raymond of the Monmouth Museum in Monmouth, Maine. The message said she had a handwritten account of the family history written in 1843 by David Turner Shaw himself.

I contacted Ann and she mailed me a photocopy of the family history right away. True to his Town Clerk calling, Shaw wrote a detailed, three page history of his family. In the document he honestly revealed which information was accurate and which was to his best recollection. The document gave me the link I needed to prove that he was part of the same Massachusetts family. If you haven’t tried surname message boards maybe now is the time. If you are patient they might just deliver for you too.