Day 4 - Still in Windsor, Ontario for Research.

First of all, here is a picture of Nog - In 1994 we were in Ontonagon, Mi, where I found him in a St. Vincent de Paul Thrift store in the 25cent bin.  He cost me 25 cents plus 2 cents tax.  He has goes everywhere with us.  He has been to Alaska twice, Hawaii, off to Churchhill, Manitoba to see Polar bears, to Egypt, to Utah, every where since 1994.

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Eleven years ago today, we were camping in Acadia National Park. We couldn’t believe our ears when the campground owner told us that one of the twin towers in NYC had had a plane fly into it and it was on fire.

We listened to the news on the radio all day, we watched the entire island stop, grow quiet and keep ears to radios or television and we cried as we heard the 2nd tower had been hit by another plane and was also in deep trouble.  We watched some of the television videos that night and did not watch any more that vacation.....

So today, we had a breakfast of the last of the Brattleboro Co-Op Multigrain bread with almond butter or peanut butter on it for breakfast and coffee.  (We’ve brought our own food so that we can try to stay as vegetarian  as we can.) Then left the motel about 10:00 a.m. and headed down towards the Windsor Public Library.

Now the lovely thing about the map on the iPhone is that it gives you 3 options and one of our options was to drive all the way down to the river, which we did.  There is a lovely sculpture park there called Odette Sculpture Park which we drove down into and parked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odette_Sculpture_Park

While we were there we got a beautiful sunshiny view of the Detroit Skyline.

     

And we just happened to be there when a freighter came through under the Ambassador bridge past us.

We left the park, saw few sculptures but we were women on a mission and didn’t stick around long.  We found a public parking lot behind the library.  Kirsten dug around and got some of US quarters and hoped the parking kiosk would take them to get us a ticket.  It did.

While we dug out our computer bags, tossed in cameras, wallets and such so we were not leaving valuables in the car, a guy several cars over from us felt like talking.  Asked us where we were from, asked us what we were doing, wanted us to check out the Walls information and the underground railroad tunnels around Windsor.  He apparently was so intrigued that we were doing research, then he started up his car as we walked away and continued to tell us what he thought we should research.

We finally got into the library building without him following us and headed down to the Archives.  They didn’t have a lot of info for us but sent us up to the 2nd floor as the OGS (Ontario Genealogical Society) information for Kent county is there.

So we went to the 2nd floor and met Mae Whaley a very helpful librarian.  She gave us several indexes and books to go through.  K was busily photographing whatever family names  Mercer, Blackwood, Elliott, McWhinney, Sparkhall, she could find and I had her also photograph a couple  McCrae names I found and a Cade which was one of the findagrave people I could not find yesterday.

We left there and meandered our way over to the Libby Library as the Archives are not open until 1:00 p.m. and it was 1:30 p.m.

The Librarian Archivist - Anna Maria Staffen was on hand to help us with the index she had put on the computer.  Then she would go into the back room to get the original books of the Church Records of St. John’s Anglican Church from back in the early 1800’s. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon going through the books, updating her index records and make photo copies of the pages K wanted.

   

  

When it was almost 4:00 p.m. she was working to get us out the door.  We thanked her for her help as she told us the University would not pay for overtime so we had to leave.   K offered to pay her overtime so we could continue to work  (yes, you heard me - K was trying to bribe a public official) but the lady said she couldn’t take any money from us.  She asked where we were from and when we told her Vermont and that we were heading out tomorrow,  she offered to let us come in at 8:30 tomorrow morning to continue looking at the records and making photos of what K needed.

So on vacation we’ll set the alarm tomorrow, eat breakfast and pack up the car.  After we leave the University we’ll head back to Chatham..... so more on that for tomorrow, I gotta eat some of these nicely ripened Italian plums.  Yum!