Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Yesterday (after turning in my taxes to the "tax man") I spent a great deal of time working on my Rees genealogy of Carmarthen and Glamorgan, Wales. From time to time one should go back to the different surnames and look for them on the new data bases and resources that have become available. Literally every week lots of new genealogical databases become available online. Not only on ancestry.com but on other websites as well. I realize I've not kept up with some of my Rees family data input into my Family Tree Maker software, so I really want to jump into the Rees family again today. I have wonderful cousins in Wales and England who I found via the internet.

Larry Akin has sent me pages and pages of questions and mysteries concerning my Chautauqua County, New York, Akin(s) family. I've spent many weeks around the Jamestown area there and the scribbles I gave to Larry about my findings several years ago is now coming back to haunt me as he wonders what this scribble on the page means, etc. So I have a project ahead of sorting through all my Akin research papers from Chautauqua County, NY, and try to come up with some answers. Larry has a wonderful, wonderful website about the Akin family at http://www.akinfamilyhistory.com/ "Akin Family History - The Descendants of David Akin of Newport, RI" The Akins were originally Quakers. Larry put years of painstaking research into the data for the website and is always on the look-out on how to update it or make needed corrections. He is a good researcher and has his sources included. My Akin line is on the link "Joseph Akin of Chautauqua County, NY "

When I was in about the 5th grade in Los Angeles, a distant relation died, and I was given his box of treasures. He was Howard Akins and the "treasures" included a letter written during the civil war, a letter written from the gold mine camps in California to the family back in NY, a land deed, and a cattle brand certificate from North Dakota. There were also a couple old tin-type photographs which were very intriguing to me. I still don't know exactly who they were, but probably they were Howard's father, Marshall Akin, and a brother. They weren't in Civil War uniforms, but I imagine they were of the same era.

The rain showers seem to be gone for now, so I've got to go for a nice long walk - of course I'll be doing it with my iPod while listening to the latest genealogical podcasts.