Lesson 9

                I typed in my name and birth date, it pulled up more than 400 results. I tried narrowing it by where I was born and gender and I got zero results. I tried several different ways and got nothing! I also searched for my brother and got nothing. I was able to find my parents with some searching. I next searched for my great-grandfather and was able to find him and the whole family on the 1940s census. I clicked a link to “find a Grave index” and was able to look at some pictures of him and the family. Overall, I was frustrated by the site, it was hard to find things and hard to navigate.

                During my search for South Dakota, I clicked on historical postcards and checked out some local ones of the Hot Springs area like a picture of the VA and the Evans Hotel. There was a big selection of post cards. It showed the name of what was illustrated on the post card and where in South Dakota it is located.

                I went into research aids, then clicked beyond basics, then on the link to “Black Sheep: 10 things to know.” It looked interesting and it was. The picture of the census record describing a man as having the occupation of “drunkard” made me laugh. A good resource if you know you have a black sheep in the family.

                In the maps section, I selected Hot Springs 1923-1942. Even when I clicked on the maps, they were tiny! I could not get them big enough to look at streets. On the first map, on the bottom was a bigger abstract of the South Dakota State Soldiers Home, which is still in use today.