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I wanted to find a cousin . . .

Discussion in 'How I got started in Family History' started by TerriB, Dec 22, 2021.

  1. TerriB

    TerriB LostCousins Member

    It was 1997 or 1998, I was in my early 30s, I had my first computer and an AOL account and I wanted to trace my family tree and hopefully find two of my first cousins. I grew up looking at the same two photos on my grandmother's TV set of two girls, a little older than me. They are the daughters of one of my mom's older brothers. We lost track of them sometime after their father died in 1969. To shorten up the story, the older cousin found me first! But in the meantime, my mother gave me an old notebook which contained two surprises. Part of the notebook contained hand written recipes for various home remedies (not too sure I'd like to try any of them!). Flip the notebook over and it contained a veritable gold mine of genealogical information for 4 generations of my grandmother's family. It started with my second great-grandparents George Slater and Alice Eckersley of Bolton, Lancashire, and their children. All birthdates, marriage date and place of George and Alice, death dates for George and Alice as well as their children who died young. It then moved on to my great-grandparents George Bernard Slater, of Bolton, and Agnes Hart, of Hindley and Bolton, recording their marriage date and place (they were married in the U.S. shortly after Agnes's arrival) as well as the births of their children. My grandmother updated the notebook with her marriage to my grandfather and the births of their four children. My mother updated the notebook with her marriage to my father and the births of my siblings and me. She also updated some other information in the notebook. I am now the caretaker of the "Slater Notebook". I have updated to include the marriages of my siblings and me, the births of my brother's children, the marriage of my niece and the birth of my grand-niece. I will eventually pass the notebook on to my niece. The book is very fragile now, with the oldest ink fading. It is kept in an archival sleeve inside of a waterproof, fireproof box. It is scanned and transcribed. It is one of my most prized possessions.

    Terri
     
    • Thanks! Thanks! x 5
  2. RoseJA

    RoseJA LostCousins Member

    Hi Terri,
    How wonderful to have such a notebook! I am deeply envious.

    I used to think that stories about books containing family details were just myth (plenty of bibles in my family but they contain no useful information about the family). But one day a cousin in Australia mentioned she had such a bible, very fragile, given to her by our aunt when my cousin visited the UK in the 1970s. The information it held corroborated what I'd researched and filled in a few gaps, too.

    Happy new year,
    Rose
     
  3. Margery

    Margery LostCousins Member

    The family bible, currently in the hands of my husband's aunt, has had the frontispiece carefully removed! We often speculate on what we might have discovered.
     
  4. That is such a shame.
    I have a copy of one page from a family bible that was given to my mother when she went back to England for a visit in about 1989. It's a real treasure, it has the exact dates and places where my 3rd great grandparents were born, where and when they married, a list of the children with birth dates and places and the dates some of the children died and where they were buried.
    My 3rd great grandfather was born in 1798.
    I have been able to find parish records for all the events.

    I suppose I could say that was what started me off in earnest.
     
  5. Margery

    Margery LostCousins Member

    That answers my question of what we may have discovered!
     
  6. I knew that and didn't mean to rub salt in the wound, I got carried away.:rolleyes:
     
  7. peter

    peter Administrator Staff Member

    Consider the possibility that it was retained by someone in another branch of the family. Assuming, of course, that it did belong to your husband's family in the first place....
     
  8. That is a good point. One has to wonder why the page was removed.
     
  9. Margery

    Margery LostCousins Member

    A good point and I guess that we will never really know. I do know (from exhaustive research by me and others) that there were certainly a lot of skeletons in the cupboard. Veracity was never a strong point in my husband's family, though grandmother was very clever in retaining just enough truth to make a story plausible. Has made for interesting research, though...
     

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