Winamac

  

          This week’s travels took yours truly to northwestern Indiana for some family research.

          The MAC Tools US Nationals were scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, but we’ll have so see if Mother Nature allows us to finish the event as scheduled or if the National Hot Rod Association will have to delay the completion until next weekend. Isaac, the hurricane/tropical storm/rain mass, has already cost us one day of competition. I’m here for the race but I came a day early to conduct a little investigation into the previous generations of our family.

          Saw a lot of cornfields between the hotel in Indianapolis and Winamac, the center of government in Pulaski County. I thought about all those cornstalks while we watched the rain soak the racetrack on Sunday. Much as we wanted to get the racing going, much of the U.S. is suffering through a draught and the rain must have been good news for the non-racers here abouts.

          I searched fruitlessly for the desired birth certificate in the county Health Department’s offices. Next, stumbled around in the genealogy area of the local library without too success. Finally, I found my way across the street to another county building and got directed to the microfilm office where I met a marvelous woman named Janet.

          Janet has accumulated more knowledge about the history of Pulaski County than you could imagine. She is amazing. It turns out she is also very friendly and helpful. Her notebooks contain references to many of the family members I wondered about, including where they lived before coming to Indiana.

          After Janet’s office closed, I had a burnt pizza (tasted better than it sounds) and some delicious Sprite (worse than it sounds) for dinner before returning to the library. Armed with the lessons learned from Janet, I charged back to the library and made a more systematic attempt to find stuff.

          Sonuva gun, I located some old newspaper references to the family in the newspaper cross reference notebooks. Then I figured out the sorting system for the old newspaper microfilm and, through the magic of copiers, made copies of these old newsprint references.

          I left Winamac having gained ground in the research but without finding the exact piece of paper needed. This is usually the best you can hope for in research of this sort: Just finding anything is satisfying. Gaining a new direction to follow is even better and I managed to do both this week.

          Add to that all the rain the cornstalks got and it was a pretty good week, all-in-all.

          Hope you had a good week as well. Thanks for reading.