Sunday, September 14, 2014

ACGS, NNYACGS or NYPL?

If I want to spend a day researching French Canadian & Acadian ancestors with materials that are not available online, I have a few choices and have to make some decisions.  I can drive to Manchester New Hampshire where the American Canadian Genealogical Society resides in a former school.  It is a 3 hour 39 minute drive according to Google maps and about 225 miles. It is always well worth the trip and I visit my in laws at the same time but it is a long haul for a weekend.  I have made two breakthroughs in my brick walls at ACGS helping me to learn some brick walls are only made of plaster.

Alternatively, I would drive to Dannemora in Clinton County where Northern New York American-Canadian Genealogical Society moved their library last year. That's 4 hours 50 minute and 315 miles.  It is open from 9 to 3 on Saturday. I have not been to NNYACGS in a long time and would love to see the new library in the new location.

The third choice is the path of least resistance using less gas guzzling mileage, less transportation time and less money using MetroNorth trains and a few block  to the New York Public Library at Bryant Park. That was the choice I took yesterday when I wanted to use Dictionnaire Genealogique Familles Acadienne,  the definitive work documenting Acadian ancestors by Stephen White.  I emailed the library three days ahead to be certain the books would be available and got a conformation.  Saturday morning , I took the train to Grand Central and walked two blocks to Fifth Avenue and Library Way.







 And there were the volumes waiting for me when I got to the reserve desk...


How lucky to have three good choices to read and obtain documentation! By the way, below is a photo of myself with Denise Lamarche-Blanchard,  Lucie Leblanc Consentino from Acadian Ancestral Home, Stephen White, genealogist in residence at the University of Moncton in New Brunswick and author of the books above, and Marcelle Comeau during the Leblanc Family Reunion at the Acadian World Congress.


1 comment:

  1. I still have a valid NYPL library card. Once to spend a lot of lunch hours up where the genealogical library used to be... Fred dit Uncle

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