Gratitude . . . and it isn't even Thanksgiving!

For the past few days, I’ve been pursuing some family lines, most of which are of dubious connection to my own main focus of research.

But I have become more and more impressed with the tremendous amount of information that has been posted to the Internet in various ways. What a delight to put a name in a search engine and have something relevant pop up in response! It wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of multitudes of very nice, giving people and organizations.

One interesting experience just has to be shared. When I first got online late in the summer of 1997, I thought, “Hey, I’ll just serialize some of my notes collection and post it to the SCOTT List.”

I felt a little embarrassed later when I realized that such a practice was somewhat “out of the ordinary” (to put the best possible light on it). I should have gotten the clue when several people wrote to the List asking just what all of this material was.

Earlier this week, I got to the point where I needed to look for the maiden name of Henry Monroe SCOTT’s wife, Emma J. So I typed the essentials into the Google search field and sent out my request.

Looking through the resulting list, I was very excited to see a direct hit. Then I started laughing when I realized that what I had found almost 13 years after the fact was an entry from that original group of postings. Kind of an “I’m my own grandpa” type of feeling! I’d had Henry Monroe and Emma J. in my old, retired notes all along. Just hadn’t thought to look there.

Perhaps the general message might be that no effort at recording data online is really wasted. Somewhere, somehow it will be of some use to someone!

Many thanks to all the contributors!