Genealogy Research at the Wilkes County Library

Friday morning I gathered up our laundry and drove 7 miles into Wilkesboro to go to the Wilkes Laundromat. There were only a few people there when I arrived and lots of laundry machines, so I didn't have to wait for a machine. I took a book with me to read while I waited for the laundry to finish. I was back at the motor home by 11:30 in time to fix lunch.

Mike stayed at the RV while I was doing laundry and he made an online reservation for Fishing Creek Campground for later this month. Fishing Creek is a Corps of Engineers campground just west of Somerset, KY on Lake Cumberland and we stayed there 6 years ago.

Mike spent Friday afternoon planning our route over to Illinois and I worked on genealogy in preparation for my trip to the Wilkes County Library today.

This morning I loaded up my laptop and research notes and drove the 7 miles to the Wilkes County Public Library in North Wilkesboro. I dropped some mail off at the Post Office in North Wilkesboro and stopped to take a photo of this house before driving over to the Library.

From Bandit's Roost Campground

I arrived at the Library at 10:45 and stopped to take a photo of the front of
the library

From Bandit's Roost Campground

before driving around to park the car in the library's back parking lot.

From Bandit's Roost Campground

The library is built on a hill and the front entrance is on the second floor. So after parking the car, I went in the library's back entrance and took the elevator up to the Genealogy and Local History Room on the second flood. I found a table close to an electrical outlet in the Local History Room and set up my laptop.

I looked through the Family Files, Heritage of Surry County, NC books, Surry County cemetery books and Surry County Court Records Abstract books and found some information on Mike's 4th great grandfather Abner Phillips and his 3rd and 4th great grandfathers Gideon and Moses Woodruff. I also found some information on various great grand aunts and uncles.

Just as I found some more court records, it was time for the library to close at 2:00. I'm planning on going back to the library on Monday morning since it isn't open on Sundays.

We had forgotten a couple of things when we went shopping at Wal-Mart Supercenter the other day, so I drove over there to do a little shopping before going back to the campground.

I got home about 3:00 and a little after 4:00 we noticed it was getting really dark outside and it was getting really windy. I took Tinker outside for a quick walk, while Mike lowered and tilted our awning. Mike had staked down our awning while I was gone today and he shortened the straps after he lowered it. We had only been outside for a few minutes when it started to rain and we just made it back inside before the storm hit.

We had some pretty strong winds blow in from the lake, but our awning held. We had some heavy rain for a while, but the storm blew through and was gone in an hour.

Tonight I've been typing up the notes I took at the library today and going through them to see what new information I found on the Phillips and Woodruffs and recording the information in my genealogy program and on our family tree on Ancestry.com.