What I've Been Doing for the Last Week!

My goodness - what a busy week! As I said earlier today, I drove 1,776 miles, heard wonderful lectures, met 3 geneabloggers and visited 2 wonderful cemeteries! That's just the short version - I really did even more than that.

I've been to Ft. Wayne and spent a day at the Allen County Public Library in their great genealogy collection. Well, OK, I admit - I stopped in the Dunkin Donuts first. During one of my walks to the library I also just had to stop in at the Firefighter's Museum. What a great old building! It's been there since 1893.


I've been to Thorold, Ontario and spent a night in the Keefer Mansion. My brother-in-law is supposed to be related to those Keefers, but I haven't yet started working on that line. [I do know that his great-grandfather, George Keefer, was born in Canada.] The Keefer Mansion has been featured on one of those ghost-hunter shows - I found the clips here and here - but unfortunately I didn't meet up with any ghosts during my stay.



I visited Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. It was so beautiful! I was going there to see and photograph the gravestone of my great-granduncle, Alexander Ritchie. I knew he was buried there, but I also made another discovery that I hadn't expected. I also went over to the beautiful new Archives of Ontario, but only spent a few hours there.

All of that before I even got to Oakville for the Ontario Genealogy Society Conference. While I was at the conference I go to meet Janet Iles and Brenda Dougall Merriman (who autographed a book for me!) and Stephen Danko, who was in a Friday workshop that I attended. I also manager to fit in attending a few actual session ;-) Actually, I was there early and attended workshops as well as some of the great sessions on Saturday.

Then, I decided to leave early on Sunday and head out across Ontario to Kincardine in search of another cemetery. Fortunately many of the various branches of the OGS had tables in the vendor area. I was able to talk to some helpful people at the Bruce & Grey Branch and I found that the cemetery I wanted to visit had been transcribed. I bought the book and from that was able to find what I was looking for when I got there. I also found a few things I hadn't know would be there - and that were not in the transcription book as they were somewhat more recent.

Wow - so much packed into one week. I promise to talk more in-depth about each thing. I have a GREAT Tombstone Tuesday planned for tomorrow!