Genealogy Field Trip Prep: Clayton Library Center for Genealogy Research

I'm still new to genealogy (relatively speaking, haha!) and I haven't really done a research field trip yet. I traveled to Vermont earlier this month, but it really was more of a social visit and while I got the chance to walk the colonial graveyard in Chester, I didn't get a chance to jump into a database or research books unaccompanied (I had my two boys with me and as patient as they are, they weren't ready to spend hours in a dusty library!).

Imagine my surprise when I realized how much of resource I have here right under my nose in Houston!

The Clayton Library Center for Genealogy Research is a little bit of a trek for me, but nothing when compared to what's waiting for me when I get there!

The library is an interenational research collection containing materials for all 50 states and many foreign countries. It contains approximately 100,000 books, 3000 periodical titiles, 70,000 reels of microfilm, fiche, and cards as well as a slew of online databases.

Phew!

In addition to all of that, they have a fantastic calendar of genealogy education events each month. I've already signed up for as many Saturday classes that I can escape for. (My poor, poor husband...)

The one thing I don't want to do is fall into the trap that I did when I was in Vermont. I had so many questions and so many leads I wanted to follow that I got overwhelmed and ended up wasting an opportunity to put in good work.

I know me. I know that I'd be perfectly happy to wander in and drool over all the old maps and atlases...to chat up a librarian or two about how amazed I am, and to generally burn up that free time I'd worked so hard to gain.

To avoid that, I have decided to focus on one ancestor and do my best to answer, at most, three questions about them.

Because my Norwegian great-grandfather arrived in the U.S. through Galveston (an hour away), I'm aiming to answer/prove

• his disembarkation on Galveston in 1905 (a passenger list?)
• try to gain a lead on his parentage in Fredrickstad, Norway (I need help with finding church records, namely)
• learn how he ended up in Massachusetts if he landed in Texas 

I also plan to do a little more digging into what was happening in Norway in 1905, the year he left. Turns out, after very quick glancing, that Norway gained its independence from Sweden the very same month Louis Larsen was aboard the SS Texas en route to Galveston.

Was it a coincidence? Did he leave ahead of what the thought might be a conflict of some sort? I also need to know what was happening in his hometown of Fredrikstad. Maybe more clues will bubble up there.

It's a start. More from the Clayton library next week.

....happy searching...