East Texas Family Records, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 1985 Page: 1
53 p. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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EAST TEXAS FAMILY RECORDS VOL. 9, O. 3, FAL 1985
PRESIDENT'S PAGE_ __ RCH
FILE
THE BLESSINGS OF GENEALOGY. What people won't do for genealogy!
A grave yard at dusk, with shadows growing ever darker. An old
family cemetery grown up in bushes and briers and draped from
one end to the other with thick webs of huge spiders. Snakes?
Well, you can't worry about everything. How can you manage a
clip board and a camera in the tangle of all this, along with
sweat dripping from your glasses and briers tearing snags in
your new double-knit pants? Well, you can yell the tombstone
inscriptions to your wife, whose family you're researching anyway,
but who chose not to enter the bramble. Worth it all? Of
course, eventhough the graves were not to her direct ancestors
but of their cousins who lived across the river. Oh, well! It
is fun.
What else could take a person into interesting old court houses,
lead them into correspondence with strangers, and cause them to
drive across the country to visit cousins who were only recently
found to exist?
But genealogy is fun; it must be because it's an ever increasing
activity. Quantitizing this increase is not possible at this
sitting. But our own Genealogy and Local History Librarian,
Sally Harper, at the Tyler Public Library, reports interesting
increases in family history research in the local library. Her
records show that 7,386 people visited her department during the
12 months ending in April of this year. This is up from 372
people who visited during the same time period ten years earlier,
in the old library building. Microfilm usage is now running near
to or just above 1000 per month, compared to one-fourth of this
rate less than four years ago, according to Mrs. Harper. We all
appreciate the facilities and services provided by this city
Library, and its increasing usage indicates the significance of
the need it fills in the East Texas area. But there are some of
us who also still go out and do research first hand, even in
cemeteries full of briers and brambles.
4~c~c a. ~/d~/I
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East Texas Genealogical Society. East Texas Family Records, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 1985, periodical, Autumn 1985; Tyler, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth38036/m1/3/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting East Texas Genealogical Society.