Ancestor Research Day
Don't be shocked, but I made breakfast this morning. I fixed Dave two over-easy eggs with toast. After that, we headed to the downtown area to go to the courthouse. It's a pretty building, and it has an elevator! Many of these older courthouses do not. We look for those little conveniences as much as we can because our hips and knees are not happy after many flights of ups-and-downs.
Of course, these courthouse document searches can get weary. You have to go through really old books and look for names. Finally, we saw Dave's great-grandmother's name. A hit! It's so exciting when you finally see a name that you recognize. One search always leads to more discoveries.
We found the sale of the family property from Dave's maternal great-great grandfather (Joseph Gagnon) to his great-grandmother (Marie Denise Gagnon Migneault). This led us to the exact location of the homestead in Frenchtown. Dave kept reading through old deed and record books while I ran the microfiche machine and printed copies. This search took approximately 2 1/2 hours.
Next, we headed to the surveyors office to get copies of the homestead plat. The surveyor was a really nice guy who gave us the website location of Montana plats. We purchased official copies of the plat.
Next jaunt was to the sheriff's office as we wanted to see if we could find the record of Dave's paternal great-grandfather (Antione Migneault) being arrested in Glendive for horse-stealing (and then acquitted). Because the warrant was issued fro Missoula County, we had to locate the records here and not in Glendive. But, the sheriff's office was closed for lunch. So, we decided to go for lunch ourselves.
As we exited the courthouse, we were surprised to see several urban-outdoorsmen sitting about. One guy was passed out on the lawn and exposing most of his backside. Yet, officials just walked by him. Sure glad that's not a normal scene at most courthouses. Don't get me wrong, the area around the courthouse is really nice and well-kept. I just don't understand allowing such "exposure" to remain in view of the general public, which includes children. Se le vie.
We had a really nice lunch at a Mexican bistro across the street, after which, we headed back to the sheriff's office. However, the gals in the office informed us that they do not keep records back that far. We did find a picture of the sheriff that arrested Antione, so we have to go back to take his picture (I forgot to bring in my camera after our lunch). The gals in the office were very interested in Dave's story about Antione and were relieved to know he was acquitted and didn't get hung.
The told us about a book that was written about Frenchtown's history that might be available at the book store. We headed off to Barnes and Nobles, but no luck. We stopped at Staples for a few supplies, like page protectors. Dave's 3-in. binder that has about 4 inches of material already is in need of adding yet more documents. Guess he needs to separate into several books, but where do you make the "split"?
We stopped at Best Buy to get the Shift key put back onto my laptop. Seems there was a pony bead (itty-bitty bead) stuck under the key. Where that came from, I have no idea as I have never used the laptop around beads. The Geek Squad didn't charge us to put it back together, and now I can type much faster!
Next, stop--a hair cut. My mop has gotten so long it won't hold a curl anymore. So, we both got scalped and feel much better.
Off to the Book Exchange to see if we could find the Frenchtown Valley Footprints book. We didn't hold much hope because this book has been out of print for 30 year. This bookstore is a second-hand and out-of-print bookstore, for the most part. But, God was smiling down on us and we were able to purchase their one and only copy. It was expensive, but worth it to Dave and our future generations and Dave's cousins.
We headed home our very busy, exhausting, and yet successful day. I had put a chicken "casserole" in the crockpot before we left the RV this morning. So, when we arrived home, our din-din was all cooked and ready for us.
I have no pictures to share with you of today's activities. So, after reading this wordy, picture-lacking blog entry, I thought you might like to take time to "smell the roses." So, here are a couple of pictures of Montana wildflowers.
Dave busied himself tonight reading and sorting through all his materials. I worked on sort our pictures and writing the blog as I watched TV out of the corner of my eye.
Tomorrow we plan to head to Frenchtown to see the homestead and see what information we can dig up there. Hasta Lavista.
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