It started with just one document—a death certificate for Peter Tobin, my third-great-grandfather's brother. I knew his date of death, but his age and the number of years in Brooklyn and in the U.S. set me off with a little happy dance. With research possibilities bubbling up in me, I had no choice—I cleared out some work over the weekend and set aside a day to explore my family history. Not just any day—a weekday! Yes, I wanted no interruptions. With the hubby and child off to work and school, I could bury myself in research and really make some progress.

However, the success I found that day didn't come as I expected. Instead of locating the records I had hoped to find and filling in some gaps, I found dead ends. An hour into my search and I had come up with nothing. With and four and a half uninterrupted hours left to myself before I had to get my daughter from school, I felt my hopes deflating like a Chicago Bears fan's playoff hopes at mid-season. I decided it was time to look at all of my Tobin files and stop focusing on only the new pieces of information. After all, it's been a while since I've been able to really take the time to delve into this family and I felt I needed a refresher.

So off I went on my trip through the past. But this time instead of delving into history, I browsed through past research that my mother and I had done, in some cases, decades ago. As I went along I found surprises in unexpected places. So in today's column, I thought I'd share some treasures that have been just waiting for me in my own files, as well as some steps I took to better organize my research.

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