I looked up my name and over 452,000 Lindsey Hansen's came up. So I searched again using my first, middle and maiden name and I was down to less than 900 hits. The first and only hit that was me, was from the Minnesota Birth Index 1935-2002.
I had the most fun looking up my great grandmother, her maiden name was Dillinger and my husband has always wanted me to look up her history to see if there was any relation to John Dillinger. There was just a huge amount of information and links to my relatives past that I did not even know about. In my time that I spent looking I could not find anything that said that John Dillinger was directly related but I only had time to just scratch the surface. (no one in my family has really wanted to see if there was a link there before) I really enjoyed this and my mom is looking forward to coming down to the library to do some more "Dillinger Digging" with me.
I tried looking up some of the same information in HeritageQuest but I did not find HeritageQuest to be as fun. I think that if I was looking for a something about my families past in a history book this would be my route. I was able to find some local history in a publication that mentioned Centerville, SD.
In Sanborn Maps I looked up Centerville, I was able to find a map that went back to 1893. This was interesting to me because I was able to see the lots that my house is on now and the buildings that were around it. I also looked at a map of Centerville from around the time my home was originally build around 1920. It was interesting to see the building that were around at that time and the ones on main street that are still around today.
Good work, Cville! I hope you'll let us know whether you are related to a gangster when you find out! HeritageQuest is harder to use because you have to search each section separately, where you can search everything in Ancestry at once. You are right, though, that HeritageQuest is a good place to find town and family information full-text. Fun to see the "old" Centerville in Sanborn maps. Thanks for your comments.
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