A Department of Dead Ends

THE WHITEHAVEN PUBLIC LIBRARY, in common with most municipal public libraries, has built up over the years a fairly comprehensive collection of books and pamphlets on the history of the community and surrounding area which answer most local queries, but in addition there are notebooks and letter files that form a sort of department of dead ends, queries that have petered out. Families die out and their personal papers are destroyed, or they move away and take their records with them; accidents happen to church records so that there is a gap of greater or lesser magnitude just at the point at which one is interested. There are dozens of ways in which one can come up against a stone wall, and find further progress impossible. Then some time later, sometimes years later, a clue or the answer will turn up.