German Research and I-95

In my last entry, I wrote about speaking in two states in one day. Today, I have been in six states. But I didn’t speak in any of them. I just drove through.

Last night, I spoke at the German-American Heritage Museum in DC. It’s always a treat for me to do a lecture that focuses exclusively on German research, since German research was really my first love (my first genealogy love anyway!). Back when I used to take clients, I only took clients tracing German ancestors – and usually nineteenth century German ancestors.

While we’re on the topic of German research, I thought I would share a few links for anyone tracing German roots. First, I have an article online (that first appeared in Internet Genealogy Magazine) that you can read here. It’s called “Getting Acquainted with German Research Through the Internet.” A few websites have changed since I wrote this article. In particular, my favorite German site has a new address. The German Roots site is now located at www.germanroots. You may want to check out this site’s “Basic Research Guide for German Genealogy.”

Then, this morning at 6 a.m. I sat off towards home on I-95 in the car with my brother and his wife. If you haven’t spent significant time on I-95, you are really missing something in life. I have spent quite a lot of time on this road, driving between my brothers’ homes in Virginia or Maryland to New Haven, where we leave I-95 to take I-91 closer to our house in Massachusetts.

The trip between our houses, theoretically, takes seven hours. I have driven back and forth on it two to three times a year for the past four years. It has sometimes taken us seven hours – but sometimes taken much more. One time, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, it took us almost 12 hours. (It’s good thing we had lots of books on tape or the kids might have might have been climbing the walls – or I might have been climbing the walls.) Fortunately, today it took just a bit more than seven hours.

I was so excited to arrive home and see my kids again. I promised a report on the state of my house after leaving my husband home alone in it with our four kids for four days. So, he did pretty well. He had vacuumed, swept the floor, and done all those obvious things. He hadn’t cleaned up the kids rooms (where they guests will sleep), but all things considered, I was pleasantly surprised.

There will be 15 people at my house by Thursday. So from now until then, I will be cooking. My goal is to cook enough food to have a nice Thanksgiving spread – and to last these 15 people all the way through Sunday. (Last year, we had to borrow a friend’s fridge because mine was full…) It’s a lot of cooking, but it will be fun!