In the Beginning..
Welcome to Genealogy.
If you are new to the quest for your ancestors,you are sitting there with a desire to search out and find out information about those who have come before you. You are entering a world of dust and devils as you seek out knowledge and information, some of it decades gone by.
It is my fervent hope that you learn to do the research correctly and dive into the hobby with all of your energy and conviction. It is possible to become a genuine family historian with only some basic knowledge. Hopefully I can help you down this path and teach you some of the core principles of the hobby.
I have been researching my families since the summer of 1974. I started with a box of letters and papers from my Grandfather’s estate. He would not talk much about his family and what he did say barely made sense. We knew he had been raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, that his parents were Christ and Maggie and that he had left home at a very young age because he hated the farm. Not much information to go on, but enough to create a beginning. While I tackled official sources, one of my aunts tackled writing to known relatives in the area. Things began with a very slow start, in fact it seemed almost hopeless for years because of lack of documents and response from those relatives.
The first core principle of Genealogy Research….Never Give Up!
Thanks to the extremely slow progress with this Maternal Grandfather’s family, I switched my efforts to my father’s side. His mother was still living and she gave me several sheets of information to work with, that covered both his father’s and his mother’s families. In those days, there was no computer or easy access, so everything was done by writing letters or making phone calls. Sometimes it took weeks, just to get a simple reply to a question or a copy of a document. It was tedious and time killing effort, but when it paid off, it was a thrill to behold. Thirty five years later, I still have those original letters in my files because all of them are packed with useful information.
The second core principle of genealogy…..Patience!
By the summer of 1985, I had compiled enough information and gathered enough facts, to make a trip from my home in Texas to the backwoods of Pennsylvania, and on-site quest for the ancestors and their lands. Even with this many years in the hobby, there are things I did right and many things I wish I had done better. I later corrected those early mistakes, but it took time to redo some of the things I had done only marginally years earlier.
The third core principle of Genealogy…..Try to Avoid Covering the Work Twice!
For three weeks in July of 1985, I traveled back to my homeland of Ohio, over to Pennsylvania and then subsequently to Washington D.C. to visit the National Archives. if you look at the top of these blog pages, you will see a picture of McDowell Cemetery. It has over 2000 grave sites and most of them are related one way or another to my father’s family and some to my mother’s family. It was one of the things I missed on the 1985 trip, that I later discovered and eventually databased. There are five generations of the family represented in those grounds. That picture shows the oldest part of the cemetery, where some of my earliest Western Pennsylvania ancestors are buried dating back to the early to middle 1800′s.
The fourth core principle of Genealogy….Record and Document Everything!
During that 1985 trip, I collected volumes of information. One key thing I did not do was photograph people and places, but I managed to do much of that on a trip a few years later. I eventually moved to that area of Pennsylvania and living there gave me a far better perspective than any quick trips would have done. I learned the places, the geography, the politics and the dynamics of the people who settled the areas of Indiana, Cambria and Clearfield Pennsylvania.
The fifth core principle of Genealogy…..Get to Know the People!
Last but certainly not least, genealogy in this time period was a gathering of the minds. People from all over the country traded information back and forth freely, each contributing something to the overall picture. While most of this information was usable, there were issues of quality because in those days, there were no set in stone rules. Often bad data would present itself and it was always the result of bad research attitudes and practices. “Grandma said it so it had to be true!” One of the key things I despise about many of the “new” genealogists, is that they don’t bother to learn before they quest. They run around the internet banging people to send them information and offer nothing in return. Thus I have had to deny dozens of requests and have had to wish people well as they trip down an untrained path.
The sixth core principle of Genealogy…..Collaborate Carefully!
What is your end result of your search? For me, publication has always been the goal. I have always treated this as a hobby and as a business. I teach Genealogy when I get the chance and I do sell my resulting research and databases. I also sell several templates that work in Access. Some have bashed me for this, but I pretty much ignore those people. If they want to work for free that is their choice. It is not mine. You will chose your own path in this hobby and stick with it. Choose what you want to research and where. I chose to research all of my lines and so far have added over 23,000 totally connected people to my database spanning up to 13 generations in some of my lines. Some refer to their research as a tree, I refer to my research as a vine because many of the branches are tangled.
The seventh core principle of Genealogy…..Set Your Goals!
I hope you find this blog interesting and informative. It comes from over three decades of experience. Those of you who read will learn.
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