Additions to my Genealogy Collection

If I never felt like a genealogist, boy, I sure do now! It all started simply enough.  An email from my friend Kay Lynn, who volunteers with me in the NCGenWeb project:

…while cleaning out and going thru all my genealogy books I came upon a few Washington County cemeteries that were surveyed in 1936.. would you be interested in these? 

I maintain the Washington County, NCGenWeb page and I of course had to take her up on the offer! Then, as we exchanged emails, it turned out she had some other Washington County items as well.  Since Kay Lynn only lives about 20 minutes away from me, I decided to just go up and visit yesterday. 
And what a pleasant visit we had.  Her land has a few buildings on it, so she has a vehicle to get around. Here are Jihad and Kaleya with her “mule” as she calls it :-). 

Kay Lynn was cleaning out her research room of material that she doesn’t use often for the sites she maintains. It was my lucky day that she had things relevant for counties that I work on or contribute to for both NC and the  TNGenWeb Project. Thus, I came home with waaaaay more than I knew I was going to get! 🙂

And, I had to clear out space on my bookshelves for it – see the one that’s just about empty 2nd from the right? This is to be their new home.

The collection of material includes:

• Onslow County, North Carolina marriage records 1764-1867 by Frances T. Ingmire (1983)
• Onslow County, North Carolina 1860 Census – compiled by Michael Whaley & Bob Jenkins in 1989
• Onslow County, North Carolina Voter Registration Records: 1902, 1904, 1906, 1908 – by Delmas D. Haskett, Jo Ann Galloway & Helen Moore Sammons (1995)
• Abstracts of Land Entries, Onslow County, NC 1778-1796 and Jones County, NC 1795-1797 – by Dr. A. B. Pruitt (1990)
• Onslow County, North Carolina Cemetery Records – an 11 volume set compiled and indexed by Michael Whaley in 1996
• Washington County Genealogical Society Newsletters & Quarterlies from their very first issue in March 1990 – November 1994 
• Transcripts of Washington County North Carolina Marriages from “Index to  Marriages, Vol. 1” 1851-1872 published in 1993
• Washington County 1850 US Census
• the above-stated 1936 Survey of a few Washington County cemeteries
• “Family Findings” – monthly newsletter of the Mid-West TN Genealogical Society from their very first issue in April 1969-1992!
• quarterly publication of the Middle TN Genealogical Society from 1988-1997
• “Ansearchin” News – publication of the TN Genealogical Society, 1989-1991
• 2 big binders of records from a funeral home in Lauderdale County, TN that cover 1923-1986 and 1989-1991

Of this list, some items are already available online, some are not.  Some have copyright, some do not.  Thus, the extent of what I can put online will vary for each of them. Some are very hard to come by – for example, the Washington County Genealogical Society doesn’t even have in their own library their issues going back to the beginning. And, they’ve given me permission to put old issues online already so you can guess what’s going to happen with these!
However, in each case, no matter what I can or cannot do with them online, there is a distinct benefit to actually owning a physical copy and I am quite delirious! Look at them in their new location.

What exactly am I going to do with all my new-found bounty?

• figure out the best way to make sure researchers in the counties these are most relevant to know that I have them so I can offer lookups
• get at least the indexes posted online when possible
• in a few cases, the whole document can be put online so work on that
• digitize it all (for my own personal use if it is still under copyright)
• catalog it all – as well as the rest of my book (physical & electronic) collection 

Thank you so much Kay Lynn! You truly made me a very happy gal.  And, of course, I still left room for anything else you may wish to pass along as you finish your cleaning. 🙂  What a great start to my Memorial Day Weekend this has been.  Today is going to be equally exciting.  I’ll post about that later so stay tuned….