NGS/Salt Lake City - Days 0-1

Day 0
Yesterday I drove from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City with a stop in Las Vegas. My cousin located the rest of his mom's photos so I stopped for a short visit and to get the pictures. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't just a few photos, but instead five albums full! One of which is my grandaunt and uncle's wedding album. I resisted looking through. But you know the first thing I did when I got into my hotel room? The oldest photograph is a cabinet card from ca. 1897 and the most recent is the 1970s. Most of the photos I have never seen before. They are in the old black paper albums and the paper is brittle. The glue holding the pictures on the pages is no longer sticky and a lot of pictures are no longer attached. Those that are come off every easily. Which might be a good thing. Before whoever glued them in, wrote a description on the back of most photos telling when it was taken and who's in the picture. Now the bag is sitting on the hotel desk with a sign saying "fragile! please don't touch." I don't want to let them out of my sight! But oh, the FHL, the conference...

Day 1
Today was a full day planned at the Family History Library. Went strait to the 3rd floor and the books. My big breakthrough of the day was Aaron Hall, my gr-gr-gr-gr-grandfather. I found a death date for him and another wife and some more kids.[1] His widow, my gr-gr-gr-gr-grandmother Harriet (McKinney) Hall, sued James E. Hall, son of Aaron hall for her dower. It lists all 10 of his children by name and the eldest two daughters with their husband's names. Did I say ten children? Aaron married Harriet in 1835 and they had five children before Aaron's death in 1845. According to the record, only the youngest 6 children were minors (these are the ones I knew of). So where did Aaron get four more children? The lovely Scioto County Marriage Records has two entries for Aaron Hall: the one with Harriet McKinney and a second entry where an Aaron Hall m. Margaret Edison 15 Feb 1815.[2] In those years before full census enumeration it seems I had missed an entire family. Tomorrow after the BCG Education Fund I'm going back to the FHL to look at the microfilm of the Chancery Book for the full record. Most of the rest of today was spent with microfilms, digitalizing different pages from different places. Most of these records I've looked at before or knew what the record would say. Tomorrow I think I'll tackle land records or perhaps all those marriage records.

Sources
[1] Caryn R. Shoemaker, comp., Selected Abstracts from Common Pleas and Chancery Complete Records, Scioto County, Ohio (1810-1875) (Minford, OH: n.p., 1985), 199.
[2] Caryn R. Fuller Shoemaker & Betty J. Sisler Rudity, Marriage Records of Scioto County, Ohio, 1803-1860 (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub. Co., Inc., 2003), 54.