QUESTION 1
I wasn't able to find myself. Probably because I have just had a cell phone for most of my adult life but I was able to find my some of my dad's old addresses in the US public records index and he is still very much alive.
QUESTION 2
I looked for my great grandfather Fred Kaitfors. I found several census records for him. It is fairly easy for me to search my dad's family because we have a very destinct name and as far as we know we are the only Kaitfors family. So I looked at other Kaitfors and found the ship that my great-great grandfather Matts came over on and tons of other records for my family. The coolest thing however was a Finnish baptism record from 1798 for Mathias Kaitfors from Finland but I couldn't view the original and am not entirely sure how to bring it up. I am not sure how he fits into our family tree or if the dates are off because there was a very simaliar record for 1795 and my great-great grandfather was supposedly named Mathias but he would have been born in the mid 1800s. I couldn't bring up the record either. Tried to email but it didn't work either. Will have to investigate that further.
QUESTION 3
I did the South Dakota picture search and was really surprised. I didn't know that they had all that on there. There were family photos, yearbooks, postcards, headstones and more. Ancestry.com rocks!
QUESTION 4
I can never find my family in Heritage Quest except on the census. I did a search for Spearfish instead. I came up with 21 hits, mostly with just 1 or 2 mentions of Spearfish. I also browsed a bit and found several books listed of George Washington's descendants.
QUESTION 5
I pulled up the Sanborn maps for Spearfish. In October 1885 (the earliest map listed) there was a gun shop, grocery store and Chinese laundry located on the block that the library/municipal building now occupies. Also in 1885 there was a skating rink on Main Street next to where the opera house would be built. Did they mean ice skating or roller skating? Was there roller skating in 1885 or was there a pond there? How odd. It is neat flipping through the years and watching the town grow. The 1923 map has an index on it. This would be handy because I get people in the library all the time trying to figure out where old businesses used to be. This might help.
Great ideas for using Sanborn Maps to help people remember where old businesses were. Heritage Quest can be challenging to find specific people BUT you used it the perfect way--finding "the story" in your community which can help you understand what was going on during the time period of your ancestors. Thanks for your post! Julie
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