"Happy New Year's Eve 2011"

where there's a puzzle, there's a way...

I intended to post about "The Year of Living Aimlessly" tonight but that was before I stayed up until 3:45am this morning--having begun at around 5pm yesterday--working on a piece of the genealogical jigsaw puzzle that I started just about this time last year.

...ALONE

My Frencher Half had taken to the road toward points north of the Middle of Nowhere, France, on Dec 26th for a week, which gave me the opportunity to singlemindedly devote myself to my ongoing family tree project. The first 4 days of work were long and routine, however, yesterday in the late afternoon I followed a hunch, consulting Ancestry.com and Find A Grave, simultaneously, and I finally found out where my mother's father's father, who died in 1903 shortly after his two sons' birth, was buried in Tennessee.

I had nothing on which to go but my paternal great-grandfather's name, William Thomas Wright, which is listed on my grandfather's death certificate. However, I had a potential ace up my sleeve--my maternal grandfather's middle name, Perrien, is exceedingly rare in this galaxy. Consequently, using Find A Grave's database sorted by country, state, and county, I followed a hunch and entered the name of the county in which it was thought, and never known for sure, that my grandfather was born in Tennessee and...

Bingo! I found a William T Wright with the correct approximate birth and death dates whose mother was listed as being Sarah Adeline Duke. I was sure that she could not have been his mother, but rather his stepmother, because of his date of birth relative to those of her other sons. Her children's birth dates quickly turned out not to matter in the least when I read that her husband's name was Perin Wright.

If your eyes have started to glaze over, fear not. I have no intention of going on and on with this. What I want to note for the record though is that it took me the entry of 8,500+/- individual names, 16,000+ cited record links, the uploading of 500+ photos to that family tree, and a year's--2011, to be exact--grindingly tedious keyboarding for up to 10 hours a day 4-5 days a week to find the traces of those human beings.

No one could have paid me to do that work. It was a labor of love and this morning at almost 4am when I laid myself down to sleep, Chuck Yeager, as channeled by Sam Shepard, had nothin' on me.


Bursting through to Mach 2...

Happy New Year's Eve y'all. I'll see you on the other side...



My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)
written by Peggy Lee
covered by Regina Spektor

My dear acquaintance,
it's so good to know you
For the strength of your hand
That is loving and giving
And a happy new year
With love overflowing
With joy in our hearts
For the blessed new year

Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

All of those who are hither and yonder
With love in our hearts
We grow fonder and fonder
Hail to those who we hold so dear
And hail to those who are gathered here

And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, young, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year
Happy New Year