{"id":3543,"date":"2025-10-24T13:40:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T13:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3543"},"modified":"2025-10-24T13:40:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T13:40:01","slug":"happy-halloween-the-synchronicity-that-saved-my-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=3543","title":{"rendered":"Happy Halloween: The Synchronicity That Saved My Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My readers tell me, year after year, that my Halloween synchronicity series is their favorite tradition. Which is why, by August, I was in a quiet panic. The kids were back in school, stores were already pushing candy corn, and for the first time in my genealogical career\u2026 nothing weird had happened to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nada. Zilch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I considered scrapping the whole thing and writing a single line, \u201cSorry, folks, nothing to report this year\u201d and calling it good. But that felt wrong. These uncanny little moments can\u2019t be summoned on command, but I still held out hope that one would arrive just in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It did. On August 14th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was volunteering at the Association of Professional Genealogists table during the Jewish Genealogical Conference in Fort Wayne. Since I\u2019d signed up for the whole week, I was allowed to attend a few sessions during breaks. I\u2019m not Jewish, though occasionally my DNA results tease me with a percentage or two that disappears the next time I test, but I found every talk fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in my own research life, I was deep in the throes of acquiring certified vital records for my family\u2019s dual citizenship application. Two notarized forms were already on their way to Croatia to obtain my grandmother\u2019s birth record. That left one gaping hole: my grandparents\u2019 1917 marriage record from Cook County, Illinois.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had the index entry from Ancestry.com, names, date, location, marriage license number, but when I visited the Cook County Clerk\u2019s office two weeks earlier, they couldn\u2019t find the record. I paid for the search anyway, but they gave me no timeline of when they could do deep research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the conference, I mentioned my predicament to a fellow genealogist, who knew someone with database access. The news came back: my grandparents\u2019 marriage record hadn\u2019t been digitized. Neither had the record for the couple immediately after them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lost? Misfiled? Never returned? Theories abounded. One person even suggested they\u2019d never married. (\u201cIt was staged,\u201d she said of their wedding photo. To which I thought: Really? That would be an awfully elaborate prank for this couple.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No one had a solid lead. And I needed that record, not just to prove the marriage, but to identify the church where it took place. Chicago city directories for the period were scarce. The Chicago History Museum couldn\u2019t help. The Archdiocese would search closed-church records for $50 a pop, but that was a quick road to the poorhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came my first odd nudge of the week. While exercising, I heard my grandmother\u2019s voice in my head: Look at the back of the pictures.<\/em> Sure enough, on the reverse of what looked like an engagement photo, there it was \u201cChicago Heights.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I brought the photo to Sherlock Kohn, a fellow conference-goer and photo expert, who confirmed the clothing was period-correct. She suggested the Chicago History Museum for studio leads. I kept chasing, but the record stayed stubbornly hidden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second genealogist offered another tip: years ago, FamilySearch had donated pallets of old microfilm to the Allen County Public Library (ACPL). Maybe, just maybe, my record was buried there. I tracked down Adam, one of ACPL\u2019s librarians, and he gamely searched the microfilm. Blank images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, you\u2019re probably thinking, Lori, just search FamilySearch online.<\/em> Oh, I had using the index with every permutation of the last name and around the date the marriage occurred, and nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I decided: I\u2019d comb through every 1917 marriage image by hand. First, though, I made a side trip to birth records for my mom, two hours later, I had confirmed my mother\u2019s birth was indeed only recorded by the church, just as she and my grandmother had said. (Cook County, Illinois later confirmed this – I got the “certificate” of no registered birth on the date my mom had died 24 years ago. Weird, huh?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then it was late. I was tired, discouraged, and dreading the thought of cold-calling every Catholic church in South Chicago. Still, before leaving, I opened the 1917 marriage film on FamilySearch, locked to home users, but accessible at ACPL. I scrolled to the end of one reel. No luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then my computer glitched. As a non-resident, my ACPL guest account was on a timer. It flashed \u201c10 minutes remaining\u201d and kicked me out of FamilySearch. When I logged back in, I had 7 minutes left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next reel contained 1,278 images. No way I could check them all. So I did the only thing left, I scrolled, stopped, and clicked at random.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My eyes fell immediately on \u201cMary Koss.\u201d Without even scanning the rest, I gasped loud enough to turn heads in the reading room. \u201cSounds like you found something,\u201d a man seated across from me said. A woman down the row called, \u201cWe aren\u2019t finding anything, do tell!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was near tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam hurried over. I showed him the record, and he smartly told me to write down the film and image number. Then he handled the printing as the machine wouldn’t cooperate (with help from a kind patron who wanted to donate her library account to me) while another researcher kept my computer from timing out so I could email it to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of 1,278 possible images, I had landed on the<\/em> one I needed, completely blind. Missed in indexing, out of sync in databases, invisible to every search I\u2019d tried. And yet, here it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Grandma!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here’s a link of another uncanny find I didn’t have – ENJOY!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to you, dear readers: Happy Halloween. May the coming year bring you your own uncanny genealogical coincidences – just when you need them most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My readers tell me, year after year, that my Halloween synchronicity series is their favorite tradition. Which is why, by August, I was in a quiet panic. The kids were back in school, stores were already pushing candy corn, and for the first time in my genealogical career\u2026 nothing weird had happened to me. Nada. … Continue reading “Happy Halloween: The Synchronicity That Saved My Blog”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1321,1319,1320,1318,907,572],"class_list":["post-3543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends-and-musings","tag-acpl","tag-cook-county","tag-jewish-genealogical-conference","tag-marriage-record","tag-mary-koss","tag-synchronocity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3543"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3649,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3543\/revisions\/3649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}