About six months ago, I re-connected with my hobby of genealogy thanks to Thomas McEntee and his ‘Genealogy Do-Over‘ project. This do-over project came at a time when I was also slowly beginning to digitize my work thanks to the encouragement of a blog post by Dick Eastman (similar but newer post on going paperless). This is proving to be a daunting task. As I go back thru my files, I am very thankful for the influence of others on my genealogy journey.
First for my grandmother, Winnie Currey Crawford, for starting me on this quest. (Grandma, I apologize in that I still haven’t found your grandmother’s grave.) Both of my grandmothers (Pauline Mentzer Briles and Winnie Crawford) provided me with lots of information, stories and most importantly, pictures. For that, I am very grateful.
Second, to my mother-in-law, JoAnne Strohmeier Philbrick Miller for showing me how to use a pedigree chart and family group sheets. I would also like to thank JoAnne for introducing me to ‘scholarly’ genealogy by encouraging me to read Val Greenwood’s book, The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy.
Third, to my husband, Michael Philbrick and my family. My husband and parents willingly indulged me with a research trip to Salt Lake City on a vacation to the Tetons. It was during this trip that I attended a workshop on research and purchased my first software package, Personal Ancestral File (PAF). My husband has been very supportive of this hobby over the years and continues to be willing to adjust those travel plans to allow for visits to courthouses, libraries and cemeteries.
Thru the years, there have been countless people and organizations that have impacted my research. Below are the ones that have had the most memorable impact.
- Topeka Genealogical Society and Kansas Council of Genealogical Societies for providing opportunities for me to grow in my knowledge of how to research
- Ruth Keys Clark and the Kansas Council of Genealogical Societies for providing research trips to Salt Lake City
- Bob Velke for his work on the software program, The Master Genealogist (TMG)
- John Cardinal for developing Second Site software to easily publish my research on the web
- The TMG community for encouraging the documentation of any/all life events and developing ways to record that information within the software.
- The TMG-Refugee community for providing guidance on how to migrate data from TMG to a new software package
- For all those researchers willing to share information and more importantly research tasks over the years. Mickey Briles Barby and Sandy Kuchenreuther stand out because of the quantity of letters and emails we exchanged in trying to document the Briles and Currey families. I still vividly remember trying to help Sandy locate a Currey family in Oregon because a newspaper article placed them in Oregon, only to discover the family living about 100 miles from me — in Oregon, Missouri.