(written on the 12th from notes taken previously)
I don’t remember exactly how it came up this morning, but my mom mentioned that when she tries to turn Happy’s windshield washer squirters on, nothing happens, So I grabbed my multimeter, and we went out to try and troubleshoot what was going on.
Gratefully, the washer fluid motor was super easy to access, 🙏 but that’s where the ease stopped. 😅
I had my mom try it, and there was absolutely no noise coming from the motor, so I disconnected the electrical connector, and tested the voltages.
With key on, one of the wires had voltage and the other didn’t at first, but then later, both wires had voltage. 😶
As best I could figure out online, the way it was supposed to work was that one wire should have power all the time, and the other one should be grounded by the washer module when the switch is depressed to turn the motor on. When it grounds the wire, then the motor has the proper power from the one side and ground from the other to engage.
But I was getting power to both sides with the washer turned on.
Ugh. Really?!?! Of all the common easy things that it could be, it turns out to be the most complicated of them all?!?!
😒
Why does this always seem to happen? And now two examples of it in as many days, the tractor first and now this.
Good golly.
I removed the washer fluid tank from the car, pulled the motor out, and decided to try and bench test the motor itself.
I used my jump box to supply power and ground. Directly to the pump, and nothing.
Okay, so as best I can tell, we’ve got a bad pump, and we’ve got some kind of an electrical short in the system.
Ugh.
[sigh]
Since it seems pretty clear that I needed a washer pump, I went ahead and looked one up on AutoZone, found one for a decent price, called them up, and ordered it. Supposedly, they’ll call me tonight to let me know when it comes in.
The stuff I ordered from Amazon was supposed to come today, and so I didn’t really want to leave my mom’s place and head over to the Hill only to have to come back once everything showed up, so I just sort of hung around all day after diagnosing Happy.
I think I also spent a good long time working on cleaning up those pesky recovery files. So. Many. Files. to go through. 😅
But I’m making progress.
I’m also starting to feel sick. 😅
Looks like I got a little too close to my mom. 😆
Speaking of being close to relatives, my mom was telling me about a new search option that FamilySearch offers that allows people to search full text strings.
Apparently, the feature can be used to find information that didn’t used to be able to be found. 🎉
But I’ll get back to that in a moment.
Sometime in the early evening, my Amazon stuff arrived, so I went out and grabbed it and brought it back to the van. At first, I was pretty disappointed. The curtains I ordered seemed far bigger than what I expected, and the sunglasses weren’t the color that I thought I ordered. 😕
So I just sort of left everything in my van, a bit disappointed, and headed back into the house.
Oh well, at least I’ve got what looks like a halfway-decent, waterproof, push-button start. 🙏
Back to the family history… I don’t remember exactly how it all came about, but my mom and I both decided to work on genealogy tonight. I haven’t worked on genealogy for a good long time, but as we got started, I turned to my mom and said something to the effect of, “We’re going to make a breakthrough tonight.”
And with that, we got to work.
My mom did her full-text search and rather quickly found that there was a William Jurden (somebody with the same first and last name as our adoptive ancestor) who had purchased land from somebody named William Carter.
Well… our William married a Carter (Betsey), and with it being fairly common for family to sell land to family, it seemed like we had a pretty good lead. 😁
🙏
With the name William Carter to go on, I started digging in. 🤓
One of my favorite places to search is both state and United States census records.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any state census records at all for the time period, but I was able to go through the federal census records, and there was some really promising information.
I found William and Betsy in the Savoy, Berkshire, MA 1830 census. That wasn’t really anything new, I don’t think? We knew they were married in that town in 1829, so it’s not really a surprise for them to still be there in 1830, but still, it’s a good data point.
What was even more valuable, however, was what I found in the 1820 census.
A William Carter in the very same town Betsey Carter and William Jurden would be married in nine years later. 🎉
And not only was there a Carter family in the right town at the right time, the census listed a young woman, about Betsey’s age, living in the household!
Oh! oh! oh!
Getting warmer… 🤞
As I often do (though admittedly not for a long time, because I haven’t really done much of any genealogical work for a good long time), I popped on over to Ancestry.com to see if I could find the names of the people I was looking for in specific family trees that other people had posted online, and it wasn’t long before I found family trees posted by people who claimed who not only claimed William Carter as one of their ancestors, but listed Betsey—our Betsey!!!–as one of his daughters!!! 🥳🎉🥳
I called my mom over from the other room and showed her, and we both got excited, looking at the different relationships listed in the family. 😁
Not only was there a Betsey as a daughter, but there were potentially up to six other siblings!!!
Wow!!! 🥳
As my research has been progressing, I was taking notes in an effort to create a sort of biographical sketch of the Carter-Jurden family, so I began adding this information to the sketch as well.
Oh! And one of the people who had posted Betsey in their William Carter family tree actually had the surname Carter! 🥳
Cool!
The posters had listed some sources for their claims, but it was quite late in the evening by that point, and we really needed to hit the hay, so we started closing up shop for the night.
We didn’t have a smoking gun yet, but we were starting to piece together clues here and clues there, and to find information from different places that was looking quite hopeful.
I think we’re on to something. 🤞😊
If this connection is correct (yes, the tree creators have already added Betsey as a legitimate member of their family tree and posted sources, but so many people make assumptions without having the proper documentation to back up those assumptions), so we need to check out those sources.
If they check out, this will be huge!
We’ve been looking for Betsey and William for as long as I can remember.
🤞
After finally tearing ourselves away from our computers, and having a prayer together, I wandered out to Rover and got ready for bed.
Pretty cool day.
Though I was initially disappointed by the curtains I had purchased, after deciding to go ahead and give them a try anyway, I threaded three small i screws into the headliner board, cut some curtain wire, threaded in the hook hardware (just like New Zealand), strung the wire through my curtains, and was happy to find that my initial estimate for size turned out to be just perfect. Yes, curtains seemed far too big, but curtains are meant to be scrunched a little, and when scrunched, they work absolutely perfectly because the excess fabric can fill the gaps on the sides the rounded shape of the van sticks out further than the curtains can actually go. But because I have so much extra material, I can tug on the curtain such that it can fill the gap.
So the curtains are actually perfect. 😁
Digging the blackout curtains 🥳
🙏
Oh! I noticed my mom trying to take a picture of the little babies still in that nest (one of which I had inadvertently tugged upon 🙃), so I pulled out my phone, as I’m quite a bit taller, and the picture was much easier for me to take.
Happy little birdies. 😊
Did I mention I’m starting to get sick?
😅
Oh well. Is what it is.
Bring it on.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 