I decided I should be putting the most recent notes at the top - so much easier to read each time and to add to. November 19th, 2004 Judy Tufts (Sunbury) and her sister Pat Tufts Olmstead joined me and my sister Audrey Dagenais Roy for lunch. I suggested we should do this a couple of times during the year just to keep in touch. We'll see what happens. I'm looking forward to our next get together. One of these days we will have more information to report on our Ancestors - Patty Olmstead did give me more information on her grandchildren which I will add to the genealogy listings.

• June 4, 2001

  Today I decided to add the Hopkins clan as relatives. This genealogy report was done by my cousin Maureen Hopkins Sheehan (the pretty one from New London, Connecticut) and her daugher Kathleen Sheehan Constantine.

  
  By adding this family to my family tree maker I now have 300 names and Family Tree Maker asks if I want to submit to them. I will probably do this because they only take the names of people who are deceased.

  
  I have not proof read any of my notes, in fact today I added the names without my glasses on. I was too lazy to go downstairs to get them. I had not intended to do this right now - but the best laid plans of mice and men -----

  
  I will be mailing a copy of the Ancestor Report from the Family Tree Maker to my niece Michele in Maine because I know she would be interested in the names of her ancestors. Will have to get her to get some names from her Dad. Well, that's it for today. I also ran off copies of the ancestor reports for my children and grandchildren. Now I have to tape them together because they come off the printer in sections..at least 4 pages to a report. More later.

  
  

• June 5, 2001

I laminated all the geneaology reports last night and showed them to my friends today. Leo looked them over and thought they should be framed but I think I'll put them in tubes so they can take them out any time they want to. I am quite excited because they look great laminated. And I also decided to put my latest notes at the top. Will work on straightening out the rest of the page soon.


I have been trying to remember where I got the date of birth for my grandfather Joseph and I think the only thing I have is certificates that say he was a certain age on a certain date: on the Certificate of Naturalization (I have the original) where itsays age: August 26, 1886 and it is dated October 31, 1892. I believe the August 26, 1886 would be when he came to the States because you have to be here 5 years and 21 years of age to apply; then I have in the 1910 census Joseph was age 45 in April of 1910; and he was 54 in April of 1920. On one birth certificateit says he is 34 on September 26, 1899 - this would give him a birth date of 1865 if he was born in August and 35 if he was born in October; Another birth certificate says he was 40 on June 10, 1906 which again gives him a birth year of 1864 for either an August or October birth month. His marriage certificate says he was 24 on January 6, 1890 giving him a birth year of 1865. One other birth certificate says age 39 on January 16, 1904 which would give him a birth year of 1864 for either a birth month of August or October. So that is where I am now. Not much farther than I was 4 years ago when I started.

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• June of 1998
  The start of it all. At Tunxis Community College I took an evening Genealogy class at the Life Long Learning center with Dr. Ratford a professional genealogist. A delightful man who enjoyed his profession as a Genealogist. He was a Minister and had served as a chaplain at one of the hospitals. He was working on his family genealogy and looking also for his wife's ancestors. Because he had been doing this so long he was an interesting teacher with some fabulous stories to tell of his experiences as a Professional Genealogist.
• While in this class I met an interesting lady who was retired from Aetna and she wanted to travel to Rochester, New York to search for a building that her great-grandfather had built. She had left Rochester some 20 or more years ago and wondered if this building was still standing. My daughter was attending school in Lima, New York - right next door to Rochester. So here we were, 2 inexperienced genealogists, strangers to each other (we only sat next to each other through 5 classes). I am sure her daughter was 'warning' her as mine were telling me what a chance I was taking. But we lived in the same town - that should surely be good enough.
• July 1998

  We left on a Friday morning - she came with her van. She had already gone cross country twice by herself in the van. She had a clothes rack across the back seat and she had some of her clothes hanging.

• Our first stop was at a typical highway diner where we had a good breakfast about 8:00 a.m. She never traveled the highways. We went up route 8 to route 20 - the traffic was light and we did not have to worry about speeders. >/li>

• Spring of 1999

  I joined the French Canadian Genealogy Society in Tolland. I joined because I had made 3 visits at $5.00 per so they talked me into becoming a member. It made sense as this was my second year visitng the center. So I did pay the $20.00 fee and got a card which would allow me to get records in the City Clerks office of all the towns in Connecitcut. Of course, I also belonged to the State of Connecticut Genealogy Society at $35.00 a year which let me into the City Clerks offices but not into the French-Canadian Library in Tolland.

  Despite all of my visits to the French-Canadian Library in Tolland, I found nothing about my Grandfather, Joseph. I have this need to find him and his siblings. I was referred to the Genealogical Society in Sherbrooke, Canada.
  

• In January 2000 the Sherbrooke Genealogy Society referred me to Pierre Dagenais who has records of 5000 Dagenais marriages but he could not ascertain if one of them was my Grandfather. Pierre in turn referred me to Andre Lafontaine who had written a book of factual data (all in french) on the Beloin's - this of course is Joseph's wife and my Grandmother Victorine. He had no copies left.
  
• Pierre and I exchanged many emails trying to make a connection. He said that he too was looking for a Joseph Dagenais. (Of course, this might make us cousins?-blood cousins?) At one point he thought that my Grandfather Joseph could have been born in England as the first Pierre to come to Canada from La Rochelle, France had left a brother in France. And because the last name I had for my Great Grandmother sounded almost English - I entertained the thought that Pierre's brother went to England, married there and came to the United States without going to Canada first - the usual route before coming to the United States.
  
• Pierre (the living one in Canada)also told me that there was a Dagenais who had a son named 'Christmas' and he had moved to Indiana. I have found 2 Dagenais' listed in the Indiana phone book. I hope to write to them to see if they know anything of their Dagenais roots. I also found a Civil War Dagenais from Indiana.
  
  
• Like everything else you have to follow the rules and pay the dues. In 1999 I also joined the Bristol Genealogy Society for $10.00 a year and that membership gets me nowhere except to their meetings because they are not incorporated. (br>
• This is now April 20, 2001 and I have just decided it would be a good idea to keep a journal of my activities.I have now been a member of the Bristol Genealogy group and have dropped my membership in the French-Canadian Society and the Connecticut Genealogy Society.
  
• When I took my first course in Genealogy at Tunxis in 1998 with Dr. Ratford, the class as a group went to the Bloomfield Church of Latter Day Saints to do some research at their Family Center. I could find nothing on a Dagenais marriage - and later discovered that Joseph and Victorine were married here in Connecticut and I have a certified copy of their marriage license.
  
• Just recently I was introduced to the Church of Latter Day Saints Family Center in Southington. During the past 2 years I had gone to the LDS center in Bloomfield (with no luck on any research with Dagenais or Beloin).
  The Bristol Genealogy Newsletter gave some information on the whereabouts and hour for the LDS center in Southington. I decided this was closer to me than going to Bloomfield.
  
• At the Bristol Genealogy society I helped make calls to people to bring food for parties and one name I recognized was that of " " I had seen him at the French Canadian Library in Tolland. He works as a volunteer there and at the LSD Center and most important he speaks French.

  He was a volunteer at Bloomfield LSD and the French Canadian Library in Tolland had given me 4 micro films to order from Utah LSD covering St Therese Parish in Bainville, QC.In March I ordered these films.
  They came into the Southington center in April and I did review these films. There were 4 and it took 3 hours to review each film. I did find some confirming information regarding the sibling of my Grandfather. I am still waiting for one covering
  Canada.

  
  At my 2nd trip to the LDS center there was a gentlement volunteer who told me that he had the 1920 and 1910 census which he had purchased for his personal use. He said that I might look at them.
  the first time one I looked at (it takes 2 or more hours to go through a role of film). I started with Bridgeport in the hope of finding "Aunt Rose" But I was not so lucky.