Research, Research and more Research

Last Thursday I spent almost all day at the Traverse Area District Library (TADL) working on my own research after I completed a couple quick Random Acts requests. I made some progress and I had one of those 'oh duh' moments.
Records are still being added onto the Seekingmichigan.org website for the death records, so after a quick search I was able to find several death certificates for members in my database. It helped put things together. One person of interest was John Peter Valley, s/o Isadore and Mary Valley, who died from a skull fracture. Obviously not a normal natural cause of death so my curiosity lead me to the microfilm where I found an article on the car accident that lead to John Peter's injuries that ultimately caused his death. I also confirmed that he was the father of little Louise Mary Valley, whom I had listed with my greatgrandparents, because she died at their house from from complications of diptheria. Anyway, John Peter was driving with William Emory when the car rolled and both men were thrown from the vehicle. William was unhurt, but is was stated in the article that John's head appeared to have hit a rock causing his injuries. In the article it stated the John was a widower and he left behind his daughter, Louise. I still don't for sure know the name of Louise's mother, but I have a tentative name of Mildred Evans. Further research is required for this to be sure.

Monday I spent most of the day with Kathi adding information from my research to our Oakwood Cemetery records project. I feel that I have added a valuable amount of information to the project. CDs will be available hopfully this fall. Once the group has finished with the records in the office we will be working in the cemetery to walk the cemetery and verify information on the headstones. It should be fun.

I also worked this week and finished adding several hand written pages of notes to cemetery cards that were complied from the Immaculate Conception Church death records. I was also able to sort by cemetery and put the cards in alphabetical order.