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Saturday, October 4, 2008

Chicago

Thursday I went by train with all the commuters from Geneva to Chicago in the morning. It took a little more than an hour. After walking about six blocks and riding the L-train for half an hour, I arrived in Forest Park. I managed to find the cemetery I was looking for, Forest Home Cemetery, after a while. It's a huge area, and the gravestones I was searching for were of course not close to each other. Several of Leroy Anderson's relatives are buried there; his grandparents, three aunts, one uncle and one cousin. I found all the people I knew would be buried there, and a couple more. The grave of Aunt Augusta's stepson Walter (wife Marie) was also there. I was pretty tired after all that walking, so I returned to the city and had a long lunch at a sandwich place. I did some more clothes shopping at Sears, a top for 4 USD, before I went back to Geneva on the train.

Friday I went on the same train in the morning, and arrived at the Newberry Library at 10. It's a private research library that has a large genealogy collection. I spent several hours there, looking for more information about people in Maywood. Found some more details, but not so much. I started on some of the research questions other people had given me, but didn't get far. It's very time consuming to do this kind of research. People weren't too meticulous when it came to spelling the names 100 years ago either. Often they made themselves younger than they really were when the census taker asked also. Deciphering the handwriting is yet another challenge. But it's very interesting to "meet" these people in the old records.

I returned to Geneva in the late afternoon. Jim is the cook in the household, and he served bratwurst and potato salad with beans for dinner. The first time I have tasted bratwurst, actually.

Today (Saturday) I haven't done much, apart from sending some emails. We will try to get to a mall/shoppingcenter this afternoon.

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