Monday, February 8, 2010

More cousins and a laptop crash

Yup, it's been a few days since I've written. For one thing I ended up with a stupid virus on my laptop. Had to have the entire hard drive wiped and re-formatted. Good thing that all my family files are on my desktop computer and backed up on external hard drives and flash drives. This is one thing I cannot stress to you enough. Backup, backup and backup some more. This is absolutely critical for all reserachers and has saved me more than once. I'm happy to say that after about five days I have most everything back on my laptop. Most importantly my family database.
On to happier things. I drove about 3 hours up the coast to visit my 2nd cousin. She's related to me on the Lindsay side. Seems like all of us Lindsay descendants are coming out of the woodwork lately. It was a real nice visit. We talked a lot and looked at family pictures and exchanged information. We even called her sister in Detroit and talked to her for a while. Since my 2nd cousin's sister is about 14 years older than her, she has more memories of Grandparents and family lore. Certainly there are mysteries and curiosities to uncover in this Lindsay clan. Children born "out of wedlock" back at the beginning of the last century and marriages up in Canada with some questionable information on the certificates. Children given up for adoption. Who were the fathers of these children? We are certainly trying to unravel all these interesting stories.
Of course you know that if we'd been smart enough to talk to our Grandmothers and Grandfathers back when they were still with us, we would have some of these answers. So this would be another thing I cannot stress enough. If you have family members on any side of your family that may be getting on in years, please take the time to interview them now. Don't wait. Either record you conversation or take really good notes. Boy, what I wouldn't give for 10 minutes with any of my grandparents or even my Dad.
That's all for today,
Michigan Girl