The Hunt for Lucia Cahoon Drake.

So I'm back from Michigan.  What a bust that turned out to be.  I had made arrangements with the Mitchell Research Center in Hillsdale, Michigan to spend a day working on my family tree. The Center was closed for the holidays, but they were going to open it up for me.  Unfortunately, the ice and snow got so bad, I had to cancel and hunker down at my brother's place.  Note to self -- don't ever EVER allow my husband to have any freaking thing to do with my family history research plans.

I've reached the point in most of my research that I really can't move forward now without spending some money.  Either traveling places or ordering vital records or maybe even hiring someone.  So when this research trip fell through, I decided that I'd bite the bullet and order the death certificate from John C Drake, hoping that it would provide me with his mother's maiden name through the actual listing of her name, but I have also seen some entries in family trees at Ancestry listing John's middle name being Cahoon (his mother's maiden name).

So, I went to one of those website's where you can order a copy of vital records and began to fill out the forms.  The reason I chose a death certificate was because death certificates are available to anyone. Things have changed quite a bit when trying to order a birth certificate, a lot more restricted.  My understanding is that if the document you are seeking is more than 100 years old, there isn't a problem. 

This is what I knew:  John C Drake was born 26 April 1871 in Amboy, Hillsdale, Michigan.  His mother was Lucia Cahoon Drake and his father was John Stout Drake.  He died on 30 August 1871 in Amboy, Hillsdale, Michigan.  He dies of the bloody dysentery.  His name is on the tombstone with his mother, Lucia at the Baker/Drake Cemetery in Hillsdale.  He was called Johnny.

So I filled out the forms.  I had been psyching myself up for a few hours that it was perfectly okay for me to spend this money after the busted research trip.  Even if it costs $50 it's still way cheaper than hiring a professional or financing another trip back.  The cost was $46.  And then another $8.50 for processing.  And then another $18 to mail it to me.  HOLY CRAP!  Call me a cheap skate, but that's a lot of money to spend on something I wasn't sure about.  So I decided to fall back -- ONE MORE TIME, regroup -- ONE MORE TIME -- and double check all information just to make sure I wasn't missing something.