The Family Tree By Terence L. Day Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty.
Genealogy is a mystery lover's paradise because it's a mystery a minute.
And for genealogists anyway, it's hard to beat the adrenaline high of being hot on the trail of a solution to a mystery. Let me tell you about one of the mysteries that is absorbing my family research. She died when my grandfather, C.C. Day, was 4 years old, so it's tempting to conclude this is erroneous even though her husband's Civil War pension records so record her name. I'm reasonably certain Rachel was born a Day. Problem is we don't know who her parents were or where she was born, except it was somewhere in Pennsylvania, probably between 1841 and 1846.