ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” started working through Cindy Cruz’s rundown of her recent first trip to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City.

One of her best finds (at least for me, because it’s a family we have in common!) was a 1953 German genealogical society periodical article that was mentioned in a 1995 American periodical. “It gives information on the Gräter family of Schwäbish Hall, Württemberg, who appeared in written records as bakers, tanners, and millers early as 1497,” Cruz wrote.

The eminent German genealogy Friedrich Wollmershäuser had connected 1750 immigrants Caspar Gräter and his son-in-law Michael Lieb to emigration records in Württemberg, information that published in Henry Z “Hank” Jones Jr.’s Even More Palatine Families.

Several descendants, including Cruz and me, had done work on various online databases in the area’s church registers a couple of years ago but had been stymied by there being so many Caspar Gräters.

Needless to say, Cruz’s find of this journal article—which she transcribed and translated—has reinvigorated this search, given the carrot of a potential lineage stretching to the turn of the 15^th into the 16^th century!

After her trip, Cruz also offered some dandy travel tips for other first-time visitors:

• Pack layers of comfortable clothes for temperature variations in different areas of the FamilySearch Library.
• Buy snacks/packable lunches at a nearby grocery or use the library vending machines for food during the day. A refrigerator, microwave, and seating are available in the library’s lunchroom. Save research time!
• Pack a spillproof, refillable water bottle with a tight lid for use in the library.
• No need to bring your laptop since the library has a plethora of computers. “I took a list of my passwords and a flash drive loaded with digital copies of records I might want to reference,” Cruz wrote.
• She took Post-It notes, blank flash drives (on lanyards and marked with an address label), a composition book, mechanical pencils and large binder clips (to hold book pages open while scanning) in a lightweight backpack. “I could browse the stacks hands free and keep my valuables with me,” she noted.
• Use the city TRAX light rail for travel from the airport to the downtown/Temple Square area. It’s easy, fast, and very cheap at $1.25 per day for seniors and free in a downtown radius.
• Allow time and be prepared to walk a long distance from the gates to ground transportation in the SLC airport.

And despite all the preparation work Cruz put into her first trip, she has ideas to make her enxt trip even more productive.

“I would arrange my lists of books on library shelves in numerical order by their call number,” Cruz wrote. “I found myself zigzagging around the long bookshelves and retracing my steps looking for books on my list. I could have saved time and effort with more attention to the Dewey Decimal System and strategic planning.”

Now that’s a dedicated genealogist!