When I started my family research back in 1977, there was no internet. Computers that existed were those that required a very large room connected to dumb terminals connected directly to that computer in that very large room.
To research for a person or individual required one to go where the records were located at. If you were lucky the records had been filmed on micro-film that you could order from the LDS library and view them from a nearby location. All of this took time and money to travel.
As I lived in Tennessee, to find what happened to someone on the west coast would take time to work through the records to even understand where to start. Then you had to figure out what records might be available and where they would be located.
Fast forward to the age of the internet with many records digitized and viewable online. Several years ago, I realized that there was an uncle my grandmother told me about that I had not searched for. So, one evening, curled up in my pajamas in front of my computer, I searched for him. Within less than an hour I had tracked his journey through Washington and Oregon and found the names of his two wives and the “lost child”, my Grandmother’s Uncle James had been found!
James William Lemarr – The Lost Child – Tennessee Family Connections
