Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Very Best Genealogy Finds in 2023

I didn't find much in 2023, but I did find a few things to write about for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge this week.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1.  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted an interesting question last week in Best Genealogy Find of 2023.

2.  What were your very best genealogy finds in 2023?  Elusive ancestors?  Hard-to-find records?  Family photographs?  Family stories?  Family artifacts?  New cousins?  What else?

3. Tell us about one or more of them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

* Elusive Ancestor:  Not actually an elusive ancestor, but I may have come closer to finding an elusive relative.  I wrote on December 30 about someone having brought to my attention a person who could be the son my aunt gave up for adoption in 1945.  The man looks absolutely right and knew he was adopted, but he isn't the age expected.  I'm trying to pursue additional information about him to figure out what's going on.  I hope I'm able to determine what his connection is to our family.  Because of the very strong resemblance to one family member, I'm positive there has to be a connection.

* Hard-to-find Records:  I was able to take advantage of two new releases of digitized records:  The Maryland birth/marriage/death records (the Maryland Motherlode!) that were acquired by Reclaim the Records and placed online for free, and the New York City Historical Vital Records Project, a release of a lot of digitized birth/marriage/death records (but with some periods missing).  These weren't necessarily hard to find per se, but they're more easily searchable and accessed now, and I have found many records for my family.  There are still some that don't want to be found, of course, but great progress has been made!

* Family Photographs:  I didn't find the photographs, but my sister sent me scans of my father's photos that were in his house when he passed away.  I have been spending a lot of time trying to identify as many as possible.  I'm going to need help with all the photos of cars.