Alda Maryette Gee Paul and her records

Alda Maryette Gee Paul was my grandfather’s next to youngest sister.  For her era she was a premier genealogist and family historian.  My brother Martell in some way came into possession of some of her records (see below).  I received them from him and have had them sitting in my computer room for some time. (8 years)  I initially went through the records entering the data into Personal Ancestral File.  I only got about a quarter of the way through and then other tasks occupied my time.  I was always going to get to that, but the record got buried underneath some papers.  It was not in sight so it was out of mind.  

Saturday I was cleaning some papers off the floor behind my chair and found the records.  They were family group sheets in a cardboard binder held together with two brass fasteners.  The record was approximately 3 inches thick.  The paper was not acid free and was beginning to show the ravages of age.  The white sheets were now yellow and cracking.  I did not want to lose the information and I did not have time to manually enter the data at the present time.

I decided to scan the pages into my computer.  My scanner will scan one page every two seconds. It holds forty pages in the feeder at a time.  It took me some hours to do the scanning, but now the records are digitally preserved in PDF format. I plan to divide the pages among those of the family who are interested in helping me with the data entry.  There were 536 pages in the scanned document.  Some of the pages had writing on the back, but my scanner scans both front and back simultaneously, so this was not a problem.  Although Alda Paul did not cite sources on all the entries, there were some sources for many of her pages, which will help further in comparing the names with those in Family Tree.

I guess I will need to get up an hour earlier until I get the task done.  She was not discriminatory.  She filled out family group sheets for anyone with connection to the Gee name.  Some names are from England with no apparent connection to our Gee family.  

There is no rest for those engaged in this work.

To complete the information I wrote to my brother Martell.

My brother Martell explained the provenance thusly:

Many years ago, and I don't dare even try to guess how many, I was asking Mom about some family history, and she showed me that book.  I asked her something else, and she said that I should take it which I did.   Subsequently I looked through it and put some of the things into my PAF, which ultimately got put into FamilySearch.  How Mom came into the records is not known to me.  So I am afraid that provenance does not exist.  But for what it is worth, I did not make up the records, nor did I forge anything in that book.  I am guessing that it went from Alda to Mary Ellen Kerr Gee (or maybe William E. Gee), thence to Mary P. Stucki, thence to Mom.

I will explain how I think a Stucki (Price, actually) came into possession of Gee records.  As you know better than I, Grandma Stucki was really into Genealogy.  She spent some time with (uncle) Lynn, and told him of his ancestry, and got him into searching out his own family.  This led him back into activity in the Church.  Grandma Gee told me about that, and implied that she had a lot of respect for Grandma Stucki and her pursuits in family history.  So I think whatever records came to her that she did not know what to do with, she passed on to either Mom or to Grandma Stucki directly.

How did Alda Gee Paul decide to give the records to someone else?  Don't know.  maybe her family was not interested, and she wanted someone to do something with what she had done.  She may have even given the records to Grandma Stucki directly.  

That is the best I can do.  It is a mystery, which I do not expect to solve.

One other thought:  I kind o think that Mom gave me the records after I started to work for Family History, (about 1987-88 time frame) and I was on the kick of trying to connect us with someone in England.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to find Solomon's parents. And if I have the right book in mind, those sheets show lots of Gee folks:  Joshua Gee, some preacher Gee who was contemporary with Cotton Mather, etc.

We could not make a connection with any of those, but I tried.

If you press me, I might be able to invent some more stuff about that, but it would be mostly invented, I am afraid.

MJ

I wrote back:

Alda Paul’s husband Clarence was a member of the church, but was inactive and received his temple ordinances posthumously. She was endowed after 24 years of marriage, but they were sealed posthumously.  They had 4 children.  The oldest was endowed at the age of 23 and sealed to parents posthumously.  The second daughter received the ordinances posthumously. The third child (a son) only lived a year. The third daughter received her endowment at the age of 64 and was sealed to parents after their death, but before she died.

Judging from the data that I have in my database, the grandchildren, for the most part, were late in receiving their ordinances as well.  Thus your assumption that the inactive posterity did not want the records is probably correct.  Alda preceded grandfather Gee in death by 6 years and grandmother Gee was still alive at that time of her demise.

And thus the records came into my hands and although I do not have a cave to hide them in I will try and see that the work is done for those individuals.