Ancestry and Sanborn.

    Out of all the challenges, this was my favorite. I use ancestrylibrary quite often for research purporses. We get alot of patrons or out of towners contacting us about relatives that used to live in Lead, so I find ancestry very helpful and easy to use, and also highly successful. Even though I use it alot, I have never looked for myself, so that was fun. Unfortunately, I found no information on myself, I guess I'm living off the grid. The issue is that I'm only 24 and the only census I've ever taken on my own was 2010. The phone directories only went to 2002, and I was still living with my parents then. I couldn't even find a birth certificate! I had more luck with my grandmother however. I actually have researched my ancestors before so that came in handy. I researched my grandmother Dolores Thomas, but I couldn't find any census records. I did find her obiturary and her name in the Social Security Death index. It's always a little strange finding information about personal events that you remember clearly. On a side note, my grandfather worked for Homestake briefly, and my grandmother apparently used our library in the 1950's, because I found her in our old patron registration books. All in all, I find ancestry a very useful tool and use it as much as I possibly can.

Heritage quest on the other hand I have never used. I browsed through some of the books, and searched for any books on Lead, SD. The only results were some family histories in which some of the relatives must have lived in Lead at some point. I almost feel that heritage quest is too exclusive, and that not many people trying to do research on families are going to have need of it. The Sanborn maps on the other hand I also have used often for research purposes. I looked up Lead, SD in Oct. 1915. Lead is always a nightmare when looking at old maps, because the town has changed so much from the Open Cut and half the city is gone. I did however look up the old West Lead Cemetary, which is the cemetary for free masons here in Lead. I'm not sure if it is still in use or not, but the maps actually helped because I knew the general location of it today, but not exactly where, which I found on the old map.  I've looked before and found where our building is now, and the year in which I was looking it was simply an empty plot between the Opera House and Post Office. 
 
    I did learn a new trick with ancestry in the searching for pictures, which I never knew one could do. When I searched South Dakota I found a bunch of old baseball photos:

After the baseball photos were old yearbooks from BHSU (my alma mater) from 1916, when I believe it was still the old Spearfish Normal.