What to do with your Collection
Many years ago, when I first started in Genealogy, I was only in my teens. I began gathering facts and figures, names and dates, pictures, documents and all the other oddities that go with the hobby. This was the days before computers and the software packages that make it easier to track things.
It was an assortment of boxes and binders, each given to a specific purpose, whether it be Census, Photography, Family Group Sheets or just general collected materials. In those days, it was mostly letters, where various researchers corresponded back and forth, giving each other the tidbits of the trade. I now consider myself and old timer, because I still have most of that collection. Even with the 24,000+ names I have database on my computer.
Newspaper Obituary Policies
I have been researching a long time and one of the things that has me really concerned is the policy that many newspapers have taken with online Obituaries.
Instead of printing a full complete obituary, many papers have taken to writing just a small brief announcement and then telling the reader to “subscribe” to the paper in order to see the full result.
To these papers, I say, “Fat Chance.”
Who do you think you are?
The first season of this show has ended and being an avid Genealogist, I caught all the episodes except the one with Matthew Broderick. Sorry Matthew.
Anyway, I found myself laughing and also shouting No, No No, at the television set. Leave it to Ancestry.com to gloss over some of the fundamentals of Genealogy, in order to produce their hour long infomercial.
This last episode with Spike Lee, particularly made me sigh. While it is true that some African families did change their names away from that of their slave owning family, to make the grand assumption of the proper new family name, based on proximity is a bad way to teach Genealogy. Proximity should NEVER be used to make an assumption of connection.
Are you a Genealogist?
A Genealogist is a person who pursues knowledge about his ancestors. I tend to be a lot more precise than this. I don’t call just anyone pursuing information about their family a Genealogist. I see four different sets of people in this hobby.They lend themselves distinctly to their group whether by deliberate action or by chance, but they define themselves immediately.
The four groups are: Data Thieves, Hobbyists, Veterans, Professionals.
In this article I will define the characteristics of all four groups so that you may recognize which of the groups you fit into.
Genealogy and Adoption
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article should be construed or interpreted as legal advice.
I have been teaching Genealogy off and on for over three decades. One of the things that happens in every class I teach, is that there is at least one person who was adopted, who wants to know how to go about finding their birth parents. While my answers haven’t changed much in thirty years, the resources for both the adoptees and the birth parents have increased greatly, as has the civil understanding as to why adoption records should be made available to those searching. I have a lot to say about this issue so please forgive the length of this article.
Writing a Genealogy Letter
For those of you who have been around the hobby since before the internet, this topic will be nothing new to you. Back in the day, it was the one major way to gather information and it took the patience of Job sometimes to get an answer from a key person. Letter writing seems to be a lost art today, but it is still a useful Genealogical Tool. It helps you make contact with more current generations whose records you can’t find on the Internet or from some other source. It also gives a far more personal touch to research that is often spent in libraries or sitting at a computer screen. Here’s how I approach the Genealogical Letter when I need to use it as a method.
Obituaries
Obituaries are heavily used as a source for Genealogy Research. The logic of their use is that they often list a lot of information about an individual, their parents, their brothers and sisters, their children, their grandchildren, et……Plus obituaries can tell some of the person’s life history and activities.
Two problems come from using obituaries in your research. The first problem is the accuracy of the obituary, and the second comes from the use of the obituary itself, and whether or not it is Public Information or Copyrighted information.
Hopefully I can enlighten you to these issues and their answers.
Pass the Turkey
How many of you fight over the Drumstick? We never solved that problem in our house and the kids and some of the adults grabbed for only two available and the resulting spectacle was a sight to behold. But in the days of Atomic Testing and the Cold War, nothing seemed that strange and no one ever used the logic of buying a box of drums and leaving the rest of the bird at the store.
Twenty five or more people all crowded around an Adult Table and a Kids Table, all doing their best to grab everything in sight. Passing dishes in two different directions, so the poor suckers in the middle always got stuck with a pile up of dishes and no place to put them.
Add Some Cheese
Pictures are a large part of Genealogy Research. One of the first things I inherited from my grandfather’s estate was a box of pictures. I spent years trying to find out who the people were and even with asking some of my older relatives, I got a lot of shoulder shrugs and I dunno’s. I was able to identify some of the pictures, but many lay sadly in a box, waiting for their names to be restored.
So, here are a few thought for you when dealing with your pictures, whether Genealogy based or not.
Genealogy Software
If you are working on your genealogy, you need a piece of software to record everything you find. I have some strong feelings when it comes to software because that was my profession for over a decade. I have designed, tested, sold and installed software and taught people how to use it. So when I talk about things in that arena, it comes from some very specific ideas and experience.
Here is some historical perspective and a bit of information different than the reviews you will find on most Software sites. I have dealt with many of the developers first hand over the years and know there many motivations. I have also seen many companies destroyed by tactics that reek.