Last month I spent time working on finding sources for some unsourced people who had been in my database for a long time. There was one family, in particular, for whom I wanted documentation, but I didn’t find much. The children in this family had all moved out long before the 1850, every-name census and I didn’t find anything else that connected the children to the parents.
Then a light bulb went off in my head. The father, William Brookshire, was a proven American Revolutionary War patriot; I could look in the DAR records. I had ordered one DAR application a few years ago via snail mail, but now one can order them online for immediate delivery as a pdf file (I am all about immediate gratification).
Looking in the DAR Genealogical Research System (GRS), I searched on William Brookshire, with service in North Carolina and came up with several hits, all for the right William Brookshire.
Three of the records matched my own line of descent down to my 3rd-great grandparents, Robert Garrett and Nancy Emeline Brookshire, so I just picked one of them.
A few minutes later (after going through the shopping cart process), I had a link to the actual application in pdf format, which I was able to save to my computer. This also saved me from having scan paper documents, as I would have had to do in the past.
The cost for records delivered online is $10.00, compared to $15.00 if one orders through traditional channels. Faster service and a lower price. What’s not to love?
Check back tomorrow to see what I learned from this application.
