Stalled

It's happened again.

Like so many times before, I was determined. I was optimistic. I was focused. I thought "now I'm really going to get something done."

And now here we are.

Family history is fun. Family history is engaging. Family history is fascinating. Family history is...

• Time-consuming
• Sometimes tedious
• Often frustrating

Back in January I was sure I was going to get somewhere. I started this blog, I started transcribing my great-great-great grandfather's journal, I was making connections with distant cousins around the nation. Then, life hit. Work got busier, other commitments took hold, and the time for investigations, transcriptions, and new discoveries quickly slipped away.

I haven't worked on Warren Sabin's journal in months. While the potential insights into the life of an ancestor in 1870 is huge, the work is tedious and beyond frustrating. Old timey handwriting is tough to decipher, especially when the writer has a loose grasp on spelling and grammar. In the few weeks of entries I did get through, I learned some interesting things. Warren was a carpenter and built sleigh blades. He went to meeting, went to weddings, and walked to town with friends. He helped neighbors with threshing, commented on business in town he visited and general goings on in the neighborhood. He wrote to his relations in Marengo and they wrote to him. I'm sure once I have time to sit down and go through the remaining pages I'll learn even more.

There's that word again: time.

I'm learning more and more why so many people I encounter who are also researchers are older. You really have to be retired to do this work. And believe me, it sometimes feels like work. I have a Word document on my computer at home with 40+ pages of newspaper transcriptions that have yet to be entered into Family Tree Maker. I wish FTM had a way to tag people in an article the way you tag faces in a Facebook photo. That would eliminate a lot of copying and pasting.

[Family Tree Maker: Feel free to read this and develop that capability, then direct all royalties to me. Thanks!]

With a tree that is so wide it's hard to focus on one branch or one name. I was working on the Sabins for a while because I happened to be going through Warren's journal and Angelina's photo album. Then I remember a Shaffer item I meant to look up, or a Staker relation passed away, or a relative from the Sienknecht family emails me. There is always something else to do. This is one of those times where I wish I had tunnel vision. That kind of narrow focus would come in handy.

Last weekend I tried to kickstart my research again by visiting the Tama County Historical Society. Their hours are pretty restricted, so I was glad to have a Friday off work so I could spend an afternoon there. I spent several hours combing through the 1919 issues of the Toledo Chronicle searching for information about the Reinig and Sabin family, and I found some! Still, it took two hours to go through four months, and as someone prone to motion sickness the constant reeling of microfilm can cause an unpleasant intestinal imbalance.

Regardless of the upset stomach, the bits I did discover were enough to spur my interest again and get me excited to start research. Sadly, when I went to the museum the next day they were closed, even though their posted hours include Saturday afternoons. I think the historical society is becoming the victim of an aging membership. The volunteers who run it are all in their senior years and finding enough people to staff the few hours it is open is tough - especially in crummy weather.

I started volunteering to help the museum create signage to promote their monthly events. The public relations professional in me see the intense need for better marketing of programs and the museum as a whole. There must be young people out there who are interested in research the same as I am. I'd love to lend my insights and time to the effort, but I just do not have the time I feel it needs. The museum needs new blood, not because the current volunteers are bad or ineffective, but because they're aging, they know they're aging, and the future of it depends on this.

So if you're young, if you're interested in history of any kind, go volunteer at your local historical society.

And if you're a resident of Tama County, Iowa, stop down at the historical society in Toledo and find out how you can help.