Just a reminder

Just a reminder to myself....I have spent the past week checking on what census reading were missing for my Smyth family. I have been working on this family for a good 10 or more years. When I went to check on census readings done for various members of the family, many were missing!

I always have to remind myself to go back and look over old work that I have done. I will invariably either find a new clue that I missed before or see something that I had missed and need to check out.

With 2010 quickly approaching, I am hoping that the 1940 census will be out soon. I need to at least be caught up with the 1930 readings! So this past week, I have chosen various family lines and reviewed the census listings that I have, then gone to find what is missing. I have found most of the missing. Where it hasn't been found, I make a note of it in the Notes section, so that at least I know that I have searched before.

I began working on a story that I came across last year about a young 9 year old girl whose father brutally raped her in the woods, and when she was finally convinced that her father could no longer harm her, she reported that he had killed her mother earlier that year (1889). The father was convicted and sentenced to 34 years in the penitentiary. When I had requested records from the penitentiary, it came back that they had no record of him. I have not been able to learn what happened to either the daughter or the father. I began going through what papers I had gathered on the story last year, and looked for areas that I might have missed. I came up with a few leads, so will be following up on those this week.

Again, Note to Self: always go back and review your research!