A Research Trip is Just the Ticket

Image by rawpixel.

 

This week's post will be brief. I am busy preparing for a research trip later this week. 

My paternal grandmother's ancestors are my focus. Mary Josephine Baker (1911-1981) had Belgian, Irish, German, and Scottish roots with families that first settled in the Buffalo/Sheldon/St. Catharines, Ontario areas. I've spent a good part of the past two years researching their stories and am anxious to set my feet on the ground where they lived:

• Buffalo, Erie, New York - Cassidy, Sheridan, and Coats families
• N. Evans, Erie, New York - Sheridan family
• Grantham/St. Catharines/Port Dalhousie, Ontario - Becker/Baker, Schiltz, Cassidy, Darragh, Dyer, Manley families
• Sheldon, Wyoming, New York - Schiltz, Becker/Baker, Cailteux lines 

Each of these locales is within easy driving distance from Buffalo, so that will be my hub with day trips out to the various locations.

I've set an ambitious schedule and am gathering visit info, making arrangements with my contacts, scouring library websites for resources I might want to check, and making lists of questions I hope locals can answer. Libraries with local genealogy collections, local historical museums, ancestral churches, and cemeteries are all on the agenda.

More than anything I hope to get a feel for the places they called home—something that can only be accomplished in person.  

I'll send some "postcards" from my trip with news, finds, and photos in the next couple of weeks—and maybe a few tips on planning and executing a research trip that might be helpful to readers.

Until next time...

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved.