It helped him to keep track of the abundant queries and requests for information that he mailed off; the Post Office was an essential tool for his genealogy research!
From one such copy, I learned something new and significant about my Dad, heretofore unknown.
On the 26th of February, 1978, he was writing a request to a records department in North Carolina. He had previously visited a repository in Charlotte on a quick trip to Washington D. C. Inside, he found and requested a photocopy of a will for Edward Givens, one of my mother's progenitors. He collected the copies and got back on the road.
Evidently, my dad was unable to review the packet until he returned home to Fort Walton Beach, for in the letter, he is requesting a photocopy of page 114 in Will Book "C"; this page being the first page of the will for Mr. Givens. However, in the photocopies obtained previously, this page was for someone named Brevard.
The rest of the will was, indeed, the right file. Someone at the records department or in the photocopy office had made an error and would need to find the "real" first page, if possible. My dad sent a self-addressed stamped envelope and a one dollar bill to cover the cost of mailing. He also complimented the staff at the facility for the fine job of preservation they had done. At this point, I have yet to go through all my dad's genealogy folders and I'm sure as I continue to review their contents, I will come across this will and perhaps, be able to discover whether the appropriate response to his petition, was in fact, received.
In passing, my father, Wiley Benjamin Hill, writes, "P.S. I had the pleasure of serving in the Air Force at Raleigh-Durham Air Base during World War II."
What?!! I didn't know that. This, then, is a meaningful tidbit of my dad's personal history that I can pass along to my posterity. Nearly fifty years after dad's military service in the Army Air Corps, my son would serve a church mission in the Raleigh area!
