Holidays and new cousins (BRATTAIN / WILSON families of Madison County, IN) found

The Christmas and New Year's holidays have come and gone.  The last two weeks have been extremely busy and very enjoyable.  This year we were able to meet not only with all of the immediate family but also my two sisters and their families as well.  Nephew Eddie Neuenschwander and niece Debby Vanslyke and family were the only ones missing this year.  We had an extremely full house (30+) on Christmas eve.  We again waited until Grandson Kaleb Varner could be here to have our family Christmas, which was done on December 26th this year.  On Christmas day Carolyn and I drove to southern Missouri to pick up Kaleb and bring him back.

With all of the holiday activity I was still able to spend a couple of days at the Henry County Museum volunteering.  I'm working on creating a database program to store their collection records. Hopefully I will be able to finish this project in the next two or three weeks.  Current plans are to move to the genealogical library next to digitize their records and automate some processes.  I was also able to spend a few hours indexing for both Ancestry and Family Search.

On the family history front I've been working on the Brattain and Wilson families of Green Township, Madison County, Indiana. These are the families of  Phebe Smethers the daughter of Eli and Barbara (Welty) Smethers.  The Smethers are my paternal 2nd great grandparents.  I have found several 1st cousins (1x and 2x removed) and 2nd cousins.  Ancestry.com came through again with their fantastic census record,  Indiana marriages and SSDI collections. I still need two or three days to finish up the documentation on the Brittain and Wilson branches of the tree.