NIGR 2012-Day 2

It's hard to believe that it is only Day 2! This morning we had free research time from 9-10. My requests (pulls) from yesterday weren't ready yet, so I spent that time filling out some more pull slips. To be precise I filled out 23 slips requesting land entry files. What can I say? (shrug) My people liked to buy land. Lucky me! Anyway, if I were to order these files from home it would cost me $40 dollars each, regardless if the file was 2 pages or 20. So I'm saving a lot of money.

After our research time we had 2 lectures presented by Claire Bettag on Federal Land Records and Private Land Claims. Then following lunch we heard Reginald Washington present Records of the Southern Claims Commission and Marie V. Melchiori present Basic Military Records at the National Archives. All of these were informative and presented by people who are very knowledgable in their field.

Periodically throughout the day (I skipped lunch) I was in the "pull retrieval room." This is the room on the 2nd floor that you go to when your requested materials are ready for you to view. Overall it was a successful day, even though I didn't have time to see everything I've pulled. I copied a 200 (approximate) page Civil War pension file, a Compiled Military Service Record (that inspired me to request something else), and a series of Special Order books. The Special Order books have.... military orders in them to individuals. A while ago I blogged about Hugh Luttrell being involved with a court martial somehow. On his Compiled Military Service Record was an order number. These books contained that order. It turns out that he basically served on the jury of a court martial. Pretty cool stuff.

Tonight we made a special trip to the DAR library. The library/museum is amazing and beautiful inside. They also have a tremendous amount of material there. I was able to look at family history books for specific surnames, a collection acquired from the National Huguenot Society, county/state books, and city directories. This doesn't even begin to describe their collection. Unfortunately, when I was ready to go to the computer room and look up supporting documents in DAR applications... the system had just crashed. Argh.

When it was time to go I realized I hadn't eaten dinner yet and was slightly hungry. This is a side effect of research-- you starve yourself because you are racing against the clock. Or you are just so consumed with your research you don't realize that you haven't eaten. So I took a cab back with fellow classmates and we collapsed in the restaurant of the hotel, ate, then zombie walked back to our rooms with mumbled plans of seeing each other in the morning.

Overall it was a very successful day. I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings!