As I reach across time, as I reach across the country, as I reach across the computer keyboard, I can be at the library. Physically, I have not been to this library since my girlhood and a visit to my grandparents’ Kansas farm. Technologically, I can visit the Osborne Public Library from my Pennsylvania home whenever I wish.

Right there at my fingertips is the digitized Osborne County Farmer, a weekly paper. In the digital stacks, I can retrieve issues as far back as 1870 when the county was first settled. There I can read snippets of information about my ancestors…news of social gatherings, weddings, funerals.

As a child I never thought to ask questions of my maternal grandparents about whom from our family came before us. I did not know names, stories, burial places, facts, whatever could satisfy my curiosity now. Right now, it all waited for me at the library.

When I first explored these virtual stacks, I researched information about second great grandparents who had never been mentioned. In fact, when I found their names and mentioned them to my mother, she replied that she had never heard of them. Imagine, I was the first!

I discovered, for example, that my second great grandfather Amos Boultinghouse was getting a raise in his Civil War Veterans’ pension. I learned that my second great grandfather James Nickel was a respected horse trader in the county, and he was well known for his sense of humor. Second great grandfather William Henry Stevens, another Civil War Veteran, was the patriarch of a large family that came from England and New York to settle in the county. Second great grandfather Andrew Storer was a successful sheep farmer and planter of many trees on the prairie. He also brought the first hog to the county. At the library, these discoveries awaited my typing in a few keywords.

Treasures are found at this library by using my love of research and doggedness to look for answers. Right there…at my fingertips…right there at my computer. Thank you, Osborne Public Library, to having the county paper digitized for reader and writers like me who want to go back in time.