I have been running dry on finding more information on many of my ancestors. Without new bits there doesn’t seem to be any place to go. While waiting on the documentation for death records and naturalization records I decided to hit google. I randomly picked a line in the family that I hadn’t been working on and selected a name.
The Oakley side of the family lived in the Cattaraugus County, New York area. I had been looking for information on sending for death records for the Oakley and a few other lines that had lived in that county. It was looking like the cheapest way to begin that search was to go to Little Valley the next time I was in the area and visit the courthouse myself. There was more information on finding records for New York City than any place else. There really is more to New York than just New York City.
It is a predominantly rural area with a few nice size towns and some dedicated genealogy minded people. I have used the links found at the Painted Hills Society for searches in this location before. The Google search turned up more updated information on cemetery locations. Many of the cemeteries that hadn’t been listed before now were. I found a list of links under Olean Library for each of the cemeteries. The Pleasant Valley cemetery links even included the names of the parents, if available, and I started filling in holes.
Once I had birth, death and parental information, I went back to ancestry.com and used the census search. Entering the new names, located from the listings, up popped a family with 10 children that I had previously listed with 3. The night flew by and I found myself wandering down and filling out various branches, even making corrections. I had listed one female relative with an incorrect last name. Looking closely at the census records I could now see that she had been married previously and that was the maiden name I was using for her, she had a daughter from the previous marriage that was living with them.