Day One – Continued

So Ken and Bev grab me at the Airport. We exchange quick niceties, like you would when meeting any relative for the first time, and jump in the car to head into Dubuque. I’m staying at the Julien Inn, a historic hotel on main street that was one Al Capone’s favorite place to hide out when things got too hot in Chicago. Rate for a room with two double beds…$59/night. I could have been put up by the campaign, but I’m to old to find myself bunking with some college kids or on the sofa of a local Democrat. A guy my age needs some room and some solitude.

Anyway, after a quick check in and drop off of my bags, we head down to the new River Museum down by… well… the river. You see, the River Museum also happens to hold the collections of the local Historical Society. And the Historical Society holds the records of the county courthouse. And a previous search of indexed naturalization records leads me to believe that on October 26, 1886, my Great Great Grandfather Michael Casey just may have walked into the Dubuque County Courthouse and said, “I love America!” or something like that. At least, some guy named Michael Casey did.

We’re lead upstairs into a distant office among piled boxes and dis-mantled exhibits, where on a metal shelf in the back, there are stack of courthouse books with crumbly brown pages and tattered bindings, that document many thousands of newly naturalized Americans, minted right here in Dubuque between about 1840 and 1930 or so. It’s a powerful feeling to flip through the pages of such a book and scan the names of these immigrants, and see the countries to which they renouced any allegiance. But alas, the only book we find with the date we’re hunting for Naturalizations contains no Michael Casey.

Defeated, we head back into town and grab a nice lunch, and from there cross the Mississippi into Illinois and Ken and Bev’s home in East Dubuque where we spend a very pleasant evening getting to know each other, looking at photos and family trees, and sipping some Coors Light while nibbling shrimp.

Back at the hotel, I suffer through the download of hundreds of backed up spam email messages at a painful dial-up speed, do what work I can, and soundly crash at 11:30pm.