June Trip Day 3 - To Elgin, Illinois

We spent half of the next day traveling from Cedar Rapids, Iowa across the northern part of Illinois to Geneva, IL. Geneva has a great genealogical society that works out of a closet sized room in the historical society. It is only open from 1 PM to 4 PM on Thursdays and Saturdays. Fortunately we were there on a Thursday. We wanted to go there because they have a huge local computerized genealogical data base you can only access there. Barb again had family from here and though she didn't find the ancestral connection she wanted, we did pick up quite a bit of collateral data and listings for obituaries that we picked up later that afternoon in Elgin. But Geneva is an adorable town which is a lot like Carmel, CA with little shops lining the street and tons of character. Too bad we didn't have time to explore here. (But the pocket book appreciated that fact - mine anyway.)

We went on to Elgin and hit the local library where they had all the local newspapers on microfilm and using the indexes we gathered in Galena we harvested quite a few news clippings - obits, birth and other records.
That night we stayed in Elgin and Barb was so sad as we were only 30 miles or so from her old stomping grounds in Chicago. As things turned out it was good we didn't go on into Chicago on this trip.