Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 2

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 2

Genealogical research was a whole different world in the 1930s and 40s. Behind my aunt's baptismal record was this letter dated March 12, 1941, addressed to the Hartford Times:

Whenever correspondence was communicated through the genealogical section of a newspaper, each researcher was identified by an assigned number and their initials. In this case, Dorothy A. Y_____ requested to communicate with my uncle, R. L. B. [Ralph Loren Beers], who had answered Query 8010 on the Howard family on March 8, 1941. A portion of my Aunt Helen's legacy was a binder with the original genealogical newspaper clippings attached to paper with cellophane tape, which had yellowed and become brittle. The pages smelled musty, so I photocopied them to acid-free paper and placed them in archival presentation sleeves in a new binder.

As I paged through the HOWARD section of the clippings, I found the original query dated 12-21-1940 and it's reply, dated 3-8-1941. As you can see, it took nearly three months to get a response. I don't know if I could wait that long! The age of email has certainly benefited genealogists tremendously!

My HOWARD connection looks like this:

Debra Ann (10), Richard Allen (9), Francis Allyn (8) NEWTON; Gertrude Ellen (7), Charles Philetus (6) WALTER; Betsey Elizabeth (5), Amos (4), Nathan(3), Nathan (2), Thomas (1) HOWARD, emigrant.

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