This week I attended the annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA) in Chicago. It was such a great experience! It is the largest conference for libraries of all kinds in the United States. I learned a lot about today’s librarianship, including lots of cool tidbits about how libraries are helping genealogists! Continue reading “Genealogy at the ALA conference”
I’m looking to reconnect with any relatives of the Medine family from DeKalb County, Illinois!
This semester, I took an online Genealogy course at University of Illinois with genealogist Nicole W. Miller. I feel like I learned so much about developing trends in genealogy, and I developed better practices for researching and sourcing my own family history. One of my accomplishments was writing a formal compiled genealogy for the Medine family. I realized that there are still some close Medine cousins that I know very little about! Continue reading “Calling all Medine cousins!”
For Women’s History Month, this is Part II of a series dedicated to my grandmother’s WWII military service. Click here to read Part I.
My Nana, Millie Kaiser, joined the Navy WAVES in 1944 when she was 21 years old, in the middle of WWII. She joined the WAVES because she felt it was the right thing to do for her country. After Basic Training in New York, she had a few days leave at home, and then she was stationed in Pensacola, Florida. Millie had never been that far away from home before. For her, it was an exciting new adventure. Continue reading “Nana was a WWII veteran (part II)”
This semester I’m elated to be taking a course in Genealogy and Library Services. As part of the class, I’ll be focusing my research on the Medine family in Illinois. An introduction to their story is below.
Our family has been researching our roots for over 15 years now, and most of our ancestral lines have been traced back to the immigrant ancestor. I’ve just started doing some research on our ancestors in the Old Country. Lately, I’ve been tracing the lives of my great-great grandfather, Gustaf Medine, his siblings, and his parents in Sweden and America. This has certainly been a puzzle!
When I was young, I’d go driving with my grandfather Ed Drake, and he would often point out local landmarks and tell me little tidbits about each place. When we would drive on Pleasant Hill Road, we’d pass his old family homestead. He had fond memories of growing up there. He would mention getting into mischief with his brother, and raising chickens and other animals. Just recently, I remembered that Papa had mentioned that he and his brother discovered some hidden spaces in the barn. At the time, he didn’t realize their significance. Looking back now, it appears that our old family farm was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Continue reading “The Underground Railroad at Pleasant Hill”
The Family History Librarian 