Serendipity With My Heritage ~ Book Matching

For decades I have noticed that the view from Highway 24 of Mt. Diablo is gorgeous especially in the spring.  I've wanted to get a photo of it that was unobstructed by buildings, road signs, traffic, electrical wires and humankind. 

I wanted to capture something that celebrated to earth view and not the world view.  We've lived in the shadow of it for most of our lives, Sunday's drive by came close to my goal!
Serendiptity equals a happy accident...which did occur.  How does this apply to family history you are probably thinking.

Well when we learn about something new like book matching technology it is a good idea to check it out.  I thought about my family tree and considered who I might want to get more information about.  I chose my paternal 3rd great-grandfather, Newcomb Godfrey. Born in NY in 1806.

I went to the website http://myheritage.com.  >

On My Heritage you click on the Research Tab>

You see a search box but on the right hand sidebar you have some filtering choices.>

Select Books and Publications>

Now enter your person's information in the search box at the left upper corner>

Select Enter and Voila!  You will see some things that hopefully will be as much of a surprise as I did.

https://www.myheritage.com/research?s=208942181&formId=publication&formMode=&action=query&exactSearch=0&useTranslation=1&catId=8020&qname=Name+fn.Newcomb+ln.Godfrey

I  then looked at the very first entry for Newcomb.  I opened it and read it and save it and entered it into my sourcebox and attached it to my 3rd Great-Grandpa.  Now that book reference is captured and saved to Family Search.  

In the process of doing that I remembered that I had been trying to get another person to release the sealing of Newcomb to his parents Elijah Godfrey and his wife Hannah Reynolds.  No response from the person in two years.  This family work was begun over ten years ago.  I checked last night and Family Search had finally released it so I quickly reserved the sealing for us to do soon! 

 From the article that I saved from this first book entry I learned for the first time that Hannah Reynold was of Irish descent.

I 'd say that was serendipity wouldn't you? Below is the source I created in Family Search to attach to my ancestor's Person Details Page in the Family Tree.