Salt Lake or Bust!

Every year about this time, my local genealogical society (Clark County Genealogical Society) plans and sets up a research trip to Salt Lake to the LDS Family History Library. This year's trip begins on September 30th, and ends on the 7th of October. A FULL week of genealogical research in the world's largest genealogical repository.

My trip is going to start a day early. I will be leaving on Saturday the 29th, with a stop in La Grande, which is where I was born. I plan on spending some time reading early newspapers on microfilm at Eastern Oregon College, in hopes of finding obituaries for my gg grandmother and one of her sons who died there in the late 1800's. I have a death date for my gg grandmother from the LDS Ancestral File, so that's the place to start looking. I know her son was married in 1890 and does not show up on the 1900 census (nor does his bride, at least not under the Belden surname). Family rumor has it that Alexander Belden was shot or stabbed in a fight over cards in La Grande. Since I don't have a death date, it's read through all the newspapers and hope he died early on. If he really did die in a fight over cards, there should be some newspaper articles. We have visited their gravesites in the Summerville cemetery and there are no tombstones; their cemetery or funeral cards (available on microfilm through the LDS FHL) also contain no death dates. I'm in for a fun time! Now, if those early newspapers are just readable!

Then Sunday morning it's back in the car and drive the rest of the way to Salt Lake. On the way home I'll be stopping in La Grande again, with a full day of newspaper research if I need it.

Originally I was stopping in La Grade on the way home for two extra days, but to make my family feel better about the fact that I'm driving alone, I decided to go part way each day and break up the La Grande trip both coming and going. This makes my dh feel better about my driving, because he was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to handle a 12-13 hour drive alone.

Some of my other daughters worry because they think I'm doing this alone. Once I'm in Salt Lake I'll have a whole bunch of people to hang out with. We usually go as a group each morning to the FHL, eat lunch as a group, eat dinner as a group, and come home as a group. We usually walk there, but the hotel we're booked at always brings us back at specific times (like 5 p.m., 8 p.m, or 9 p.m.). So I'm not walking the streets alone, nor eating alone or anything else alone, except the drive there and back and my time in La Grande.

Today I went to Joann Fabrics. As I was getting into the car, the thought struck me that someone could abduct me just as easily in my own home town in any store parking lot, just as easily as they could from a restaurant, store, gas station, motel, college campus library. So for my daughters who are worrying about me, I'll be fine. I'll have my cell phone, I'll be phoning home my every move (so if I am abducted you'll know where to start looking for me), I'm driving a rental car which stands a MUCH better chance of making the trip than anything we own. I will be safely in my motel room in La Grande after dark, with all the locks locked. Once I get to Salt Lake I will be hanging around with the rest of the Society members so no worries there, either.

I can't wait!