Road Trip to Limestone County, TX

We finished up painting the neighbor's house last week. It was good to be done with that, and I don't think I want to paint another house any time soon.

Today the mum-in-law and I went up to Limestone County, Texas where her family is from to do some research. Some of her ancestors were here when Texas was a Republic. We went to the county clerk's office and looked through probate records. We wound up with more questions than we answered.

We went to Big Hill. That's where her ancestors lived, but there's not really anything there any more. She wasn't sure where the houses had been, as she'd been a little kid when she was out there last. 

Then we went to Fort Parker Cemetary and got chased around by a swarm of mosquitoes. We went to Mexia to get some deet and then went back to the cemetry. The deet worked for about twenty minutes, long enough to find all the graves we were looking for, and then the mosquitoes got bold so we got the heck outta there.

The drive was long, but we want to go back again... supposedly, there's a deep dark family secret that caused two previous researchers to stop doing genealogy. I'm not sure which side of the family it was on though, so maybe it's not the side we're researching. All I know, is I don't care about pretenses, and want to know everything.

I know why I like history and genealogy so much. Because it allows the dead to speak. 

Daylight savings time... ugh!

I hate it when they change the time. Even though it's only an hour, it throws me completely off. As if that wasn't enough, I had just gotten everything cleaned up from the dogs, fed them, and made breakfast when my sister-in-law called me to tell me that there was a break in the water line up at the pump house. So we were without water for most of the afternoon. Luckily, my brother-in-law knows how to fix a pipe, and he got to work on it and after a trip to the hardware store got it fixed up (in the rain no less). It hasn't rained much in forever, and it rains today. It never fails that every time the in-laws go to Venice, something goes wrong.

At breakfast I read an article in the paper about how terrible it is that poor people have to pay more for college than rich people. I call shenanigans. That and I wonder what people are thinking when they have no money and go to a private school to get a degree they could have gotten at a State school. I wouldn't know anything about that /snark. To be fair though, when I got my degree, one could not get a degree in animation just anywhere. The choices were limited. Now however, they are not. Plenty of public universities offer degrees in animation/3d imaging/etc. And it's sheer stupidity to go to a private school when you are poor, unless you are getting the majority of it paid for in aid/grants that don't have to be paid back. IT'S STUPID. And I should know.

I forgot to write here the last couple of days because I've had my nose stuck in ancestry.com. I probably shouldn't have, but it's Spring break, so I signed up for a month of access. I have an interest in genealogy and every once in a while take another stab at where I left off. The only problem is, the more you research, the more people wind up in your tree, and the more work it takes to get back another generation. It's all exponential after all.

 I only had a little freelance today, and no school this week, so back to genealogy... maybe I should look at getting paid to research stuff LOL