Thank You and Good-bye to a Cousin
May 29th, 2015 | 
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About thirty years ago I met two of my father’s cousins, Alta and Leslie. This acquaintance opened huge doors into my genealogical research because they had been working on our family line for years. They gladly shared everything they had with me, and a long collaboration began.
Leslie passed away several years ago, but not before giving me a copy of his genealogy database. Alta shunned computers and typed up all her records. As of last week, they are all mine, too. No one in their family has an interest in genealogy.
Alta passed away on May 15 at the age of ninety-three. Her papers date back to 1939 when she began doing genealogy at the age of eighteen. She had a huge library of genealogies and books of records from our ancestral states. Sifting through all this will be a monumental job. What joyful work!
As I dig in, I will miss her and her enthusiasm for genealogy so much. She kept at it until the very end. To her chagrin, she never did positively identify our mysterious Reed and Carter immigrant ancestors from colonial times, so I will continue the search. I owe her that, and so much more. Rest in peace, Alta.
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