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Bonnie: My name is Bonnie Dailey and I do research on genealogy here at the Old Stone Fort for the Schoharie County Historical Society. I have been doing genealogy research for over 30 years now and 10 years for the fort. The resources we have here at the fort are wonderful. We have church records including baptisms and marriages. We have cemetery records of course. We have family histories that people have created. We have family bibles that have been donated to us and histories of the county, just many many many different resources for the county.
My father’s story inspired me to begin doing genealogy research. He always told wonderful stories, had the gift of the blarney I believe, and so his stories made me interested in our family history and made me want to learn more. One of the things I found out after he passed away was a letter from an attorney about an estate that he was entitled to a small distribution from. The estate was of an Annie Sullivan who was someone I’ve never heard of. So I did a little investigation into who Annie Sullivan might be.
It took me to New York City to the public library there where I went through microfilm for hours and hours and hours and couldn’t find the obituary that was mentioned in the lawyer’s letter. So then I started at the end of the year and started back again and finally found it in July in the middle of the year. But then the next day I went to the cemetery that was also mentioned in the lawyer’s letter and found the grave stone of not only Annie Sullivan who turned out to be my grandfather’s sister but of my grandfather of many of the other siblings and of their parents. So it was…it’s hard to describe the feeling, I was actually shaking looking at it because of the introduction to all those family members. In any event a trip to Ireland this spring introduced me to the profound feeling of being part of a thousand years of history and I like to help other people try to feel the same feeling.