Family history research is fraught with misunderstandings, clues that lead to nowhere, and surprises that lead to illumination. I have sometimes encountered all three within an hour’s time spent on Ancestry.com! Inspired by a recent stint of detective work related to the Crookston Juvenile Band, I have coined a term describing a collection of these frustrating but ultimately rewarding research experiences: A Confusion of Oles.

I will explain. But first, if you are interested in the origins of collective nouns – terms like a gaggle of geese, and a murder of crows –I have a book recommendation: The Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton.

It’s not my intention to write only about funerals in my 2013 blog posts, but I would be remiss if I didn’t note the recent passing of a good friend of the My Musical Family project: Dick Egerman.

Richard J. Egerman, 86, of St. Cloud, Minn., died Dec. 28 at the St. Cloud Hospital, and his funeral is scheduled for Monday at 12:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in St. Cloud (you can read his obituary here).

I’m not in the business of writing fiction. I just need to put that out there before I tell you a story about what happened yesterday in Texas. It may sound like a tall tale, but it’s absolutely true.

If you read my blog post from Wednesday, A Heart as Big as Texas, you know that my second cousin Chris recently died in a house fire (if you haven’t read the post, take the time now to click on the link, read it and and then come back to this).

When I started working on the G. Oliver Riggs project with my dad six years ago, connecting with extended family members I’d never met was not my main goal. But as we got deeper into the project, we made an effort to locate these seemingly long-lost cousins and second cousins so we could keep them informed and also exchange information, if they were interested.

The year 2012 contained many fulfilling moments relating to the My Musical Family project, but the most exciting development for me was finding and meeting Dr. Theodore Papermaster, a 98-year-old retired pediatrician who knew both G. Oliver and Islea Riggs, my great-grandparents. In 1923, Ted joined the first boys band G. Oliver organized in St. Cloud, and he also took piano lessons from Islea for many years [I first wrote about Ted in this Nov. 25 blog post, A House Call with Dr. Ted].
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