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.
Data Thieves
Go ahead and take offense at this title; it was meant to be offensive. A Data Thief is someone who does nothing but run around the internet, copying everything in site and claiming it as their own work. They have NEVER done one ounce of original research on their own. They’ve never visited a library, a courthouse, a cemetery or a home town. They just leech the work of others and ask as many questions as they can before they are shunned.
You see these people all the time on the forums. “Send me everything you have about the Smith Family.”
I have developed a favorite response for these type of people. “Go Fish!” I developed that phrase after being thrown off of a couple forums for being much more deliberate in my comments.
These people ARE NOT Genealogists. They are exploiters. Don’t help them. Eventually they will go away like the scourge they are.
Hobbyists
I love the Genealogy Hobbyist. They are so eager to learn and are willing to do what it takes to go just one step further in their search. Many of these people only want to find out one or two things. Some may follow one line in their family only. But all of them show an eagerness that makes you want to help them.
Don’t expect the Hobbyist to have a large Genealogical Collection. Also, if you see them in the Library or the cemetery, they will often have tunnel vision. They are looking for Grandpa Ralph’s parents and are oblivious to the other family members who might be living next door.
These people will attend a class or two but may not follow up for years. They just fool around with the hobby when they get the urge.
Veterans
A true Genealogy Veteran is someone who when you ask them how long they have been a Genealogist, they can almost tell you the exact day and time they started. They have been to the libraries, the societies, the grave yards and they have usually compiled a massive collection. They know when where and how their ancestors existed and can often recite those times and locations from memory.
A Veteran Genealogist can help anyone with their toughest of problems in Genealogy. If you are lucky and they are willing to help. The mood and tone of Genealogy has changed thanks to the Data Thieves and the Exploits of Ancestry.com. Many of the huge databases of these Veterans have no been taken down off of the Internet. While the Veteran may still help you, the materials will not be easily accessible to just anyone. Many of the Veterans of the Genealogy World are dying off and when they die, their research and resource usually dies with them because their family just doesn’t know how to continue or just doesn’t want to devote the time.
Veterans accumulate information. They pride themselves in having not only found the obscure facts about their ancestors, they can often provide you the exact documentation and the source.
Professionals
Professional Genealogists can be broken down into various sub groups, but the common thread among all of them is that they do something to make money off of Genealogy. Many professionals teach, some write, some do research and others gather compilations of information to sell. I guess writing would be the common thread between all of the different types of Professional Genealogists.
I have been in this “hobby” for almost 36 years. When I first started, there were about a dozen people I would have classified as Professional Genealogists. They were the one’s writing the books and magazine articles, appearing at the conferences and basically setting down the standards that the rest of us are supposed to live by. As things developed that pool of professionals grew.
I am not talking about Certified Genealogists here. In fact, in those days, certification was a farce and the taint surrounding the Genealogical Certification was massive and corrupt. I heard people tell of having to submit their work six or seven times before the committee certified them. The committee collected a fee with every redo and some of the best work was being denied certification.
On top of that, the rules for certification have always been almost impossible. In my case, because I have one line that could not be traced, certification was not possible. It doesn’t matter that I have taken all of my other lines back to their countries of origin; some of them, 15 generations deep.
So please don’t equate Professional with Certified. I can’t tell you how many Certified Genealogists I have met over the years who I could almost guarantee you, took their work from other researchers and not their own efforts.
The same goes for those who claim membership in groups like the D.A.R. Never trust a D.A.R. research packet. I have busted several of them in my years because D.A.R. never checks them. They just assume legitimacy and take the membership fee. It’s all about the money. I don’t begrudge someone the right to claim D.A.R. or some other affiliation, if their claim is legitimate.
You can tell a Professional Genealogist a mile off. They smell like a courthouse basement, they have the dirt from the cemetery under their nails where they have spent hours clearing tombstones to get that one vital piece of data. They can recite their ancestors to you and tell you where to find yours. They publish, they lecture and they teach and they will encourage you to be much better at the hobby that you already are. They have a strong contempt for anyone who pollutes the data and anyone who fills the air with improper information based on assumptions and guesses. Their databases are massive, well connected and usually accurate. they are and have to right to be declared a Pro!
Now, which group do you fit into?
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