Pay It Forward

A bit of joy for my Friday!

Our mail delivery within our little military community here in Sicily is so.very.sloooooow.  What makes it maddening is that it can be a combination of super-fast and super-slow...so no one seems to balk at the trend of inconsistency.  Maybe I complain enough for everyone :).

I'm in the middle of a few genealogical mysteries - one of them being the family origins of a Mr. Joseph W. Daly, a paternal great-grandfather of my husband.  Like most of the challenging parts of our tree, I hit a wall with Joseph a few months back and promptly put him aside when something a little more lucrative came along.  For sake of ease.  Now, we meet again.  For this one, I even consulted a few curious friends.  I felt like maybe I wasn't searching deep enough or with the right "keywords" online or in my genealogy search engines.  Some researchers have favored methodologies for searching, and I felt I needed to branch out.  One friend immediately suggested searching for obituaries.  DUH!  In my race to the finish, I had overlooked this wonderful resource.  A BIG thank you to my friend Kathy for giving me a nudge in the right direction.

A very random Google search landed me in the virtual doorway of the Carver County Minnesota Historical Society.  It just so happens that CCHS offers an online index of the obituaries they've cataloged on microfilm, even those from neighboring counties.  What was this??  A brief, tantalizing index containing the words "Joseph W. Daly, lumberman"?  I had a feeling that maybe this was my guy!  One courageous email to a complete stranger later, and I had a prompt response of, "Mrs. Melvey, may I have your mailing address, please?  I have the copy of the article you requested."  Praise.

Who know what it would contain.  I tried not to get my hopes up.  I also put it in the back of my mind, filed away, because I knew that first-class mail to our little base would possibly take FOREVER.  As in, maybe next month?

Low and behold, I have the article!  It is a fantastic research nugget.  As soon as I post this...I'm scanning it and emailing it to my in-laws and a first cousin of my husband (someone I've never met in person, but with whom I've had the pleasure of exchanging emails with the past couple of weeks). 

Most of all, I am touched by the image above - a sticky note that greeted me upon opening the article.  No wonder Ms. Marlene avoided my emails about payment :).  What a sweetheart.