My wife noticed me working on genealogy today, and asked me if I was still searching for people.

Yep. See, I'm not only following MY family back, but my wife's, my in-laws', my cousins' spouses, THEIR inlaws' etc. I STILL have immediate family members (cousins) for whom I don't have enough information on THEIR spouses to begin searching for their ancestors. When I get that, I will be working on THEM.

My wife DOES find it a bit interesting, but hasn't "caught the bug". And, she REALLY hates the boxes of pictures and records and other things I still have to scan. And, I have a DVD of cemetery pictures to review and tag with names for a friend (and myself).

Records

Real genealogists work with sources. My understanding, without looking anything up, is that these can be primary (normally meaning the person in question wrote or was at the writing of the records), or secondary (think second-hand information, like biographies, obituaries, etc.) Indexes of primary sources are considered secondary sources.

Those who index have to deal with a lot of handwritten records, and everyone has their own interpretations of what constitutes certain letters, unless the person who hand-wrote it was extremely neat. (My handwriting is terrible, which is why I prefer to type everything!)

Another thing is that required education (readin', writin' and 'rithmetic, including handwriting and spelling), in the US especially, is relatively recent. Before WWI, and, in some places, after, children did not get the education we have today. It cost money and time, which those in the rural areas and elsewhere, needed to use elsewhere. Many of our ancestors were farmers. Their children were their farm hands. Children helped with clearing land (more on that, in a moment), planting (with horses, not motorized plows and planters), weeding (by hand), harvesting (again, few motorized vehicles - they cost too much), AND all the mundane chores like feeding the stock, milking, gathering eggs, mucking out stalls, etc. butchering, repairing the barn and house, Most of this went on all year. They didn't have enough TIME to spend much of it at school. Many people didn't know much more than how to write their names, and some didn't even know how it was actually spelled. (The latter was probably the cause for different spellings in the same families. For example, I have Emry, Emery, Emory, and Emerie; Sanders and Saunders; Oesterquist, Osterquist and Esterquest; Mintier and Minteer; Dooley, Dooly. Duley and Duly; Gissop(?), Jessop and Jessup; and MANY others. Not ALL of these differences can be attributed to the official record-keepers.)

Research

Personally, I do much of my research online. I prefer to use image records, of which Ancestry seems to have the most. While indexes are handy to find the images, I normally don't use that information in my genealogy database. Why? Because those who read the records and index them make mistakes - typos, misreadings, etc. With images, I can make my own interpretation... I can see the whole family in census records, and see that what the indexer saw as Boheman is actually Bohannon, or Sauders is actually Sanders. I can see how the enumerator of the census (the one who visited and wrote the information down) didn't ASK how to spell a name, and wrote Malise for Melissa, Pheba for Pheobe, etc. I can see why the indexer said my great-grandfather was born in Iowa or India, and not Indiana, because the enumerator wrote IA or India FOR Indiana.

Yes, I know. For the genealogy purists out there, I'm not doing it right. I don't have a lot of 3-ring binders filled with hard-copy records, pictures and printouts of my family. (I think my wife would KILL me!) I'm also not sending for and getting birth, marriage, immigration, military, and death records. Why? It costs money. Using images of the records, I believe, should be as valid as going somewhere and getting printouts of the microfilms, and photocopies of the actual records. (Yes... If I can, I save the images that prove my notes and sources.) I try to keep the information, pictures and other notes, logically, in a single folder on my computer. And, for a while there, I wasn't ABLE to get out anywhere. The internet was the only place I COULD find information.

Now, using the internet, you might think like my wife - that it shouldn't take that long. But there are various situations that make it take QUITE a while.

1. Many Census Enumerators (most all males) had notoriously bad handwriting, and others used "fancy" handwriting. This causes indexers to misinterpret letters. For example, those with bad handwriting sometimes made it hard to tell an "i" from an "e"... an "nn" from an "m"... an "a" from an "o", and MANY others. And those with fancy handwriting tended to put "curls" on their capital letters and at the end of names, causing added "e"s in various places.
2. Many Census Enumerators never got the actual spellings of the names... They "sounded it out" and put what they thought it should be. (This was also because of the many people who could not read and write, and didn't KNOW how to actually spell their names.)
3. There are MANY others' family trees out there that are questionable, and some that are just plain wrong. Many also do NOT "show the work" (source) where they got their information; or their information is from others' family trees, which may or may not be correct. Because of this, I tend NOT to use others' trees, except to give me an idea of what locations (or maybe dates or relationships) I need to research for them. (I DO use biographies from these, if they are "sourced", as I try to find them, myself.)
4. There are MANY genealogical and historical message boards, forums, and blogs out there. These are accessible to not only those seriously searching for their ancestors, but to those for which genealogy is "just a hobby". Many of these boards (my general term) have the same problems as many of the others' trees... There is a lot of misinformation out there, and some people who don't know how to search out and find at least secondary sources to prove their information.
5. Many times, a person went by two different first names throughout their life. For example, a John Morris Jessup in my tree, was called John on early census records, and once he married was called Morris. This does not include those who went by diminutive and nick-names (ie: Lissa for Melissa, Linnie for Linda, Jim and Jimmy for James, John for Jonathan, etc.) (Situations like these may be why legal documents and government records require you to use your full legal name.)

It also appears that many couples had children into their 50s. (Not really done much, except in Hollywood, these days.) And if the wife died and the husband remarried, he could have remarried a younger woman, who could have given him another whole set of children. Finding the names of all of these children can be a task, at times.

For these and for other reasons, it can take some time to find records, and to weed out the good information from the bad. (Ok... Sometimes you can find data quickly, but it's NOT always the case.)

AND, there are new records and data added online all the time.

Add to all this the occasional trips to the library, local graveyards, courthouse, other government offices for information and copies of "real" records, gathering and identifying pictures and other documents, etc., ... it takes a while. Most people spend "the rest of their lives" doing genealogy.

COUNT Your Ancestors

Besides, there are HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of people for which to search. You have a set of parents. Each parent has a set of parents, who had a set of parents, who had a set...

(In the following, Each "2" represents a set of parents, which doubles for each generation.)

Graphically, it would look like this:

Now, true, there ARE exceptions to each case.

• Say your grandfather married your mother after your father died, or vice-versa. (Legal - They are not BLOOD related... Not really acceptable by today's standards, but... )
• Sometimes a brother or sister would be the second spouse to someone, when their first spouse (the brother or sister's sibling) died. (Again, by today's standards, this might be a little... "eeeuuuwwww", but it IS perfectly legal, as it is for a children from a first marriage to marry the children of the spouse's first marriage.)
• Sometimes cousins married. (Even FDR married a first cousin.)
• Occasionally, a woman had a baby without being married. (Still, there WAS a father involved, notwithstanding "test-tube babies", and Jesus. But even THEY have both a father and a mother.)

All of these would/could change the "count", above. But, if each parent were unrelated in any way, in just a few more generations, and you have over 1,000,000 Great Grandparents in a single generation.

Of course, if you do what some genealogists do and follow only the male ancestors, the count, above, is halved.

Remember, also, that the vast majority of these ancestors had brothers and sisters (I've seen up to 15!). Many of THEM married, so there's ANOTHER line of ancestors to find.

And, you MUST remember that each and every individual noted has the same stack of ancestors in their past.

Epilogue

In my database, I have, as of today, almost 12,500 linked individuals, over 4200 marriages, and 440 sources. (I only NOTE some information for which many would create sources.)

I have, I'm sure, notes NOT in my database, on thousands of other individuals that will end up there. I have thousands of pictures on my computer which should be tied into it, too.

This doesn't include the many cemetery/gravestone pictures I have yet to tie in. nor those boxes of pix and documents I have to scan.

These numbers continue to grow as I find more and more related people and information about them.
SPECIAL NOTE: If anything happens to me, if no one else in the family wants to take on this quest, DO NOT TOSS MY WORK! There's a LOT of information here!

Give it ALL (hardcopies, computer files, etc.) to Lebanon and/or Sheridan Libraries or Sheridan, Boone County and/or Hamilton County Genealogical and/or Historical Societies. Sheridan and Hamilton County because that's where my grandparents lived, where many of the pictures were taken, and Lebanon and Boone County, because that's where I now call home; and either/both because they are where many of my father's family originated in Indiana.

And to them, for the pictures and documents of my mother's family, send that to Ohio, say, Muskingum University. My grandparents lived in that area for YEARS.

So DUH! YES... I'm still "looking for people".

It's gonna be a few years! ;-)

by Bill Sanders © January 10, 2008 - email:
 

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