Research trips are so much fun! Well, maybe not the preparation; figuring out which archives to visit, how to get there and if they are open when you need them to be, can be daunting. Even being there trying to understand how the archive works and what the best use of your time will be, can be challenging. A first quick visit and then a longer second one can be more productive. That was my strategy for the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and I think I will do even better there on repeat visits providing they don't make major changes in the meantime.
As the LMA has agreements with Ancestry, many items are actually available online. A really detailed look at their catalogue is necessary to make sure you are accessing items that would not be available online so that you make the most of your in-person visit. My preparation was a bit lacking in that respect this time but I did come up with some interesting negative info on my Arment family line. For some reason their young children were buried at Wycliffe Congregational Church. I checked the roll of church members for 1827 to 1867 as the children were buried in the 1840s but their parents didn't show up as members. There were some other family names that may be clues as to why the children were buried there. That mystery deserves a closer look.
That is one of the hardest parts about a research trip, actually unpacking the suitcase. By that I don't mean just taking all the painstaking notes you have made and putting them with the other notebooks amassed from other research trips, but actually going through things to see what treasures have been found and how they fit into your overall family history. Do they hold clues to possible new research? Or maybe they refute something you have long held to be true. Whatever those facts are they deserve to be evaluated and worked on. You spent a lot of time and energy to find them!
(This was actually a pep talk to myself but maybe I am not alone in needing it?)
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