I know I haven’t written about my book progress for the last two weeks. Two major events precluded my writing a post about my progress.

During the first week, I was chaperoning my Girl Scout troop to Disneyland. The girls had saved their cookie money from several seasons, and were able to make the trip with minimal expense from the families. So even though you might think twice about buying cookies, they really do mean a lot for the girls. We were gone five days (2 for driving, 3 in the parks). The girls enjoyed two Youth Education programs – one on Animation and another on Leadership. Our presenters were both excellent educators. If you ever get the chance to participate in the Youth Education programs, it is worth it (plus you get to go in the Fast Track line for several rides while taking the class).

The second major event occurred this week, and was less fun than the previous week’s distraction – the DDoS attack of Ancestry and many of its subsidiary companies. After spending last weekend recovering from the excesses of Disneyland, I sat down ready to work on Monday morning but was unable to access my data file or any records. I worked on a couple other small projects but was feeling dejected. My father had recently shared one of my WWII letter blog posts on his Facebook page. One of his friends was excited about the future possibility of turning the letters into a book. This has been one of my long term goals, and I had already started cutting and pasting the letter transcriptions together. So instead of working on the David Jegerlehner book, I found myself working most of this week on preparing the letters for book publication. Perhaps they might even be ready this fall or early next year.

The first volume will only contain the letters from 1942. There are over 300 letters from that year alone. With the annotations and short biographies I plan to write about some of the individuals in the letters, I think this will make a good sized book (200-300 pages). Three more volumes will likely follow. There are over 600 letters for 1943, so this year will be split in half. The remaining letters from 1944-1945 will be the last volume. I already have a table of contents and a cover designed for this book. Currently I have organized 70 pages of letters (May-August) with the remaining months of the year still to go (September-December). Over the last two days, I have written first drafts of an Introduction and the first chapter explaining who Roscoe and Gladys were.

As for the Descendants of David Jegerlehner book, I received three awesome envelopes in the mail this week: two from the National Archives and one from the Indiana Department of Health. From the National Archives, I received the Civil War Pension files for David’s son John Yagerlehner and his son-in-law Thomas H. McCormick. The Indiana Department of Health envelope contained the death certificate for Rosina (Yegerlehner) Wolfe, one of my great grandfather’s sisters. They were unable to find a death record for Rosina’s brother Charles who supposedly died in Indianapolis in 1922.

The book progress updates will be going on hiatus for the next month. I have numerous other commitments that will take me away from my computer and my research, including a little vacation time. Because although Disneyland was fun, it wasn’t truly a vacation while chaperoning eleven 13-15 old teenage girls. That’s hard work!

© Deborah Sweeney, 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/06/21/the-book-progr…t-june-21-2014/