I haven't written one word of my Lipa family history yet.
But I'm very excited to tell you that I found another cousin! Two actually :-) Remember those letters I sent out a while back in an effort to make contact with a descendant of each of my great grandmother's children? Well, I struck out more than I hoped but I did score 2 home runs! And I couldn't be more delighted with the cousins I found!
I told you about a cousin I found a few weeks back. I have yet to meet with him in person but I would like to very soon. I proposed meeting him next weekend but I haven't heard back from him yet.
More recently I was contacted by another of my second cousins as a result of my letter writing campaign. She is the granddaughter of Auntie Josie! Imagine that! And her mother is alive and well and has shared some very precious memories with me, memories not only of her mother, Auntie Josie, but of my great grandmother as well! This last week has been filled with emailing and letter writing as we have all enjoyed learning more about our family history. They share my enthusiasm and that has made the whole thing all the more fun. There's nothing like sharing your genealogy research with someone who is really interested, is there? And the best part is they are willing to share back... memories and even photos!
While we have shared a great deal over the last week, there are still so many questions I want to ask my new found cousins. So much I want to know! And I haven't even met with the first cousin I found yet. But what I'm learning is definitely stuff I'll want to include in the family history. So for the immediate future I'm tabling my plans to start writing the family history. I'm just too hot and heavy into the research right now to think about writing. And I'm loving it!
It's been years since I've had reason to pour over microfilms, documents, and databases looking for new clues about the family. Mostly I've just been filling in a missing birth date here, a missing marriage date there. But I'm hot on the trail of new people and new info now and I've got a genuine genea-high going!!!
So I'm going to ride this wave for as long as I can. The writing will have to wait for another day. I'm still hoping to write and publish the history this calendar year but that all depends on how much more new information I get and how long it takes me to follow up any new clues. You know how that goes ;-)
