Quaker Meetings & PILES, HALLS, SMITHS

I obviously have flunked at my resolution to write on a daily basis, but twice in two weeks is definitely an improvement! My research time has been centering around reading CDs which I purchased many years ago, but never really "got into." My research on the Pile, Hall and Smith branches of the Carpenter family led to a renewed interest in Quaker meeting minutes. I remembered that I had CD #192-The Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy. Some of my files contained notes that there was material on this CD, but all said I still need to study and print it. Thus I started on a large-scale printing project to put the correct pages in the proper files. Now that I have a done a bit of printing & filing, I am up to reading and then sourcing the materials on my FTM database. Understanding Quaker records better than I did when I first looked at this CD several years ago, causes them to make a lot more sense, and the volumes of facts they have to offer are now apparent to me. Suddenly instead of hating CDs I am finding them a useful resource. Another interesting thing I found when I turned to CD research was CD #213, Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. I found a wonderful article on early Salem, West Jersey, families, with some attention paid to my Pile, Hall, and Smith families. I was then able to make more corrections to my database. With the wills and deeds as a base, all these materials are invaluably helpful. I think I would still not appreciate them if I hadn't first done the hard (or fun, depending on your point of view) work of Archives research. Now I just want to have a chance to return to the Archives armed with my new knowledge and new questions. It is a never-ending cycle: research, study, research, study, etc. Given a little more research I should be able to give my readers a synopsis of the origins of these families in West Jersey. I have yet to reach that comfort level with my research. I will, however, share some of the original documents from time to time if there is any interest in them. Then we can all try to interpret them together. Barbara