The summer has been long and very hot. Much to do and little time to do it all in.

These days have been filled with research and discovery on my own lines and my clients. I love learning new things even after so many years of researching my own family and when I can help solve a puzzle or confirm on old family lore for another family it is even better.

Visiting archives, historical societies, libraries and cemeteries in southern VA just a week ago, logging in 309 miles, led me to a lot of time between places to think strategy and methods to finding and cataloging the most information in a limited amount of time.

A birthday gift this year was the new Google Nexus 7 tablet. I have downloaded the Ancestry app, Google docs, Find A Grave and a few others that have really made it easy to keep track of things while I traveled. Though I have long been a laptop user, it is not always easy to use, especially outdoors like at a cemetery. The apps on the tablet have allowed me to use the voice command to dictate research notes, the camera to take photos and the ancestry app to take a look at the family files that I was researching. All in a small 7″ compact wonder of technology.

As great as my Nexus is, I also found that good old fashioned pencil and paper were also necessary tools as I struggled to complete a new line for a client involving a tight community full of “Wilson”s who all seemed to use the same first names in each generation and discovering whose was whose meant a lot of writing, erasing and writing again to draw down the lines and complete a 75 year puzzle. Just the kind of project I like.

Now that summer is winding down, I have much to chat about so look for new posts to come this week and continue as I share the stories, history and heritage of my own family and those of others I have worked on. Discovering along the way a lot about myself and my hopes for the future generations.