The Month of May was full of Genealogy fun with my Mother and looking for her Great Grandfather Creed Wilson. This month theme really ties in well with this trip we mande. The whole trip was based around genealogy. It seems like the womans side of a family really gets the short end of the stick, once they change their name from maiden to married.

This Creed Wilson in on my Mom's Grandmother's side. Everyone we talked to that was old enough to have first hand knowledge (numbers are shinking) knew only of the paternal side. We started our trip in Curry Co. New Mexico. We were extremely sucessful until we came to the women and having to go the extra step of marriage investigaton. Marriage information not always low hanging fruit. With a little dilegence and good resources we were able to obtain enough information to start sifting through microfilm. Our two day visit was a success for the time alloted.

The boarder Counties in  Missouri such as Jackson and Cass and Vernon are very rich in history especially in regards to the Civil War. There was a Civil War fought there that is very different that any other parts of the fighting theaters. My ancestors were right in the middle of this conflict at the boarder. Finding information on this conflict is overwhelming, finding detailed information on personal stories require a great deal of time and effort. The resources are available if you have, but it requires a skill that I wish I was better at. 

Walking cemeteries can be time consuming and great exercise. They are most rewarding to find the final resting place of ancesters, at least you know they will not be migrating to other parts of the country. I was very concerned about my 86 year old mother over doing the walking and you always want to stop off at the office and see if you can get a map of where a relative's lettle piece of real estate is. Even that does not alway make it easy at a large cemetery.

Genealogy Societies are a great help and when you find a society that has an organized library to work in, you have struck gold! We spent many hours in genealogy libraries looking for clues to find our missing Creed Wilson. We knew so much about his parents and his children, you would think he would be easy to find when he died and where he was buried.........wrong! After three weeks you get very frustrated and feel like you have to give up.

We were running out of time and found ourselves with alot of great information even though we did not have the grand prize of our goal. We did however meet a man in one of the society libraries that took an interest in our quest and even helped us our doing research. As we were leaving on our last day, our new friend made an offer that I could not resist. He said if I thought of anything when I got back home, he would be happen to do look ups for us. Well, when we got back to California I did think of something and sent him an email. This wonderful stranger took the time to do some research for us and scored two very informative  obituaries in the microfilmed newspaper archives. Not everyone can be so lucky to  meet someone and do what our new friend did.

We never did find where Creed Wilson died and where he was buried. We did find when he died and that may lead to another road trip in the future. Now that I have date, it will narrow down the rolls of microfilm that have to be gone through.

As for my 86 year old Mom, we visited a few places where she lived in Kansas City area. There is a funny thing, and it relates to the new 1940 census. My mom is listed as living in an area of Lenexa Kansas just as she was in 1930.  What is funny about this is she moved away from this area and lived in 2 other places in the span of 10 years. These two census sheets make it look like she lived in Lenexa all this time. It just goes to show that a lot of things can happen in 10 years and a census sheet is only a paint stroke in a vast mural of ones life.