Jackpot and Ancestors!

I have decided when I get to my next life and will meet my perfected body I will do what today I cannot do. I will jump up and down for great joy! Today I have found some ancestors that I have been researching for ages. I found out from my mom a year or so ago that her maiden name was not her actual name that it had been changed from another name at the time of her great grandparents. I had been talking to her that I had been blocked time and time again in researching my grandfather's paternal line. That was when she told me..she also told me she was sure she had told me that before. Uh no mom..I have been researching our line for decades..I would definitely remember you telling me and I would not have wasted so much time locating something that was not there.

I asked her what the name had been and she said "Solange (what she calls me when she is upset or exasperated with me) I am almost 80 years old you want me to remember something I overheard my parents talking about when I was a young adult? Uh yes!!! She said she would ask her older sisters to see if they remembered but no one else knew the name had even changed. I found a website that gave you name changes for french names and I found 5 names that my grandfather's name had been changed from. I called her up and said I had 5. She told me if she heard it she would recognize it. It was the 3rd one and she said that's it!!!

I was then able to go back 3 more generations at that point (gee the things you find when you have ALL the CORRECT information!) But once again I was stuck. As often happens with me, when I get blocked I tend to put that line aside and work on another line so had not been back at it since last summer. Well today I went to our main city library downtown Vancouver as I knew they had a lot of research books we did not have in our family history centre and as research books are not allowed out in inter-library loans I headed over.

I knew the books I wanted, all 7 volumes of them. They are quite heavy so could only carry 2 of them to my table at a time. When I went to get the 3rd one I reached down (of course has to be on the 2nd shelf from the bottom!!!) but my hand grabbed a different book...the ones I needed are red, thick, short but bulky..this one was blue, tall, wide but not very deep. So narrow in depth that it didn't even have room to have the title on the binding. I thought that's weird..so I flipped it over and read the cover (good thing I read French!) and here was this book that was the recordings of marriages in 1666 in Quebec BEFORE it was even Quebec when it was called Nouvelle France (New France). I thought huh...ok.

So I put it on the table and got the other big ones I needed. Because that one was so much smaller I decided to go through it first. Ideally it would have been so much easier for me if whoever had recorded all the information had put it in alphabetical order but nope they had it in order of parishes. I started with page 1 and worked all the way to the last one.

I have to tell you I found names on EVERY SINGLE LINE of my family!!!!! Because I have been researching for many many years, I was able to recognize names from my lines as ancestors. Those I found I knew by name but had never been able to get their marriage date or date of entry into Canada from France..but now..this...well I was ecstatic. 5 hours later Keith called my cell to tell me he was on his way to pick me up..Already??? Seemed like I had barely started!

As soon as I got home I started entering the data I had furiously scribbled onto paper into my computer. I ended up having to take Lareta and Darien to their meetings so popped in to the FHC and kept working. I was agitated for lack of a better term..I knew these were my ancestors but I had a hard time with matching them to the first of the ancestors I had on my records.

But finally after an hour and a half I was able to connect one of the lines I had found!! I was thrilled. I know to some of you reading this you must think is this woman for real?? These are dead people! I know.. ain't life grand???? :-D

I have my regular day at work tomorrow and a staff meeting to get ready that night but man it will be so hard to not work on my own work tomorrow! It is after midnight here now and as Keith went to bed an hour ago he said "Well I guess I will see you at the table still when my alarm goes off?" hehehehe he knows me well!