This is my second year working on this year-long
prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week
in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing
about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.
My first foray into genealogy happened at Sutro
Library in San Francisco. Sutro Library is a part of the California State
Library and holds the original collection of former mayor, Adolph Sutro, who
donated the collection in 1913. It also has a huge genealogical collection and
the collection is now housed in the J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco
State University.
When I visited the library in the 1990s, it was
housed in its own building on Winston Avenue. My friend, Susan, took me there
one day. I had been wondering about genealogy research. She went on a yearly
trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, where she would spend six
full days doing genealogy research. How could someone do that? I had asked.
At Sutro in those days, we looked at census
records on microfilm. I knew that my grandfather’s family was from Montana, so
she put the 1920 soundex reel for the surname HORK in soundex code H620 on the
reader and I took a look.
Oh, what joy when I found Cyril Hork’s card on the
reel, along with other Hork family members in the same household. She then
showed me how to find the actual census page on another reel.[1]
That day was so exciting. I found the family in
the 1910 and then 1900 censuses, too! On the way home, I said, “I’m going to
Salt Lake City with you next year!”
I had caught the genealogy bug at the Sutro
Library!
[1] 1920 U.S. Census, Ravalli Co, Montana, pop. schedule, Hamilton City, ED 182, sht 12b, dwelling 281, family 315, Julia Hork, digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com), NARA T25, roll 975. I
don’t have copies of the soundex cards or even the census records. I dutifully
copied the information into a notebook. At the time, there was only one
microfilm reader that made copies onto that slicky paper.
Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
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