Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again -
Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is to:
1) April Fools Day is Monday. When were you a Genealogy Fool? What wrong, funny, or silly genealogy effort did you make?
Here’s mine:
There have been a few mishaps in my adventures in genealogy
research. In the beginning, I only looked at census records as I moved back
generation by generation. Mostly I was successful. Occasionally I chose the
wrong ancestor and would feel foolish. Once I discovered there were other kinds
of records, I had to lop them off the tree. I also didn’t expect to find two
men of the same name when I thought the name was unusual but I did, and I had
to work hard sorting the two out. I felt foolish the few times I’d get an email
saying I had the wrong person. Sullivan was a pretty common name in the mining
areas of Montana. It’s easy to mix up families.
Also at the beginning, I relied mostly on indexed records I found in books and online at places like Rootsweb and USGENWEB websites. But I also used the sites to get addresses to record repositories and I wrote letters asking for records, such as death certificates, baptism records, and obituaries.
I cannot remember any particular foolish thing I did but I have many regrets. I regret that I didn’t listen more carefully and record what my grandmother told me about her life. I spent a summer with her and her sister and during dinner each night, they told such wonderful stories. I thought they were funny but it never occurred to me to write those stories down. Now I wish I had.
I wished I had asked my grandparents about their parents and
grandparents. That would have given me stories five generations back. I never
even asked my mother about her childhood and she died before I got the
genealogy bug, so that was a great loss.
I'm happy you can't remember any particular foolish thing you did with your research. I wish I could say that!
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you on not asking/listening to more of the grandparents' stories. I would love to ask them what their parents and grandparents' lives were like, what their personalities were like and if my grandparents ever asked specifically about those lives. I also wish I could ask great grand-aunt Pearl who everyone is in all her photos. She lived well into my lifetime - I was 21 when she died, but I only saw her when I was a little girl.
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