Walk on

I love visiting cemeteries in my search for relations and extended families.

But there's one thing that always bothers me - walking across the cemetery. I try to not walk across where I think people are actually buried but sometimes it's just not feasible or possible to avoid doing so. There are times when I am not absolutely certain on which side of the marker a person is actually buried. It's not always apparent. I take close-up pictures of headstones and markers so I know that I am probably standing on top of someone.

And I probably shouldn't be greatly concerned about walking across graves because, well, they're dead. But it's the appearance of doing so - it's like it's disrespectful. I steer clear of plots that have obvious recent burials because that would be really rude.

So I tread carefully and take the long way around and try not to worry too much that I might cross over someone's final resting place by accident.

Send me everything

After posting some notes on message boards, I may get a note or two in response but usually nothing that directly relates to the family I'm researching. A good section of the responses will be in the direction of 'I have that same name but in another county, another state, etc - do you think there's any connection'.

Sigh.

What really gets me is the responder who, to my note about John Smith born 1850 and dying in 1911 in Union County, replies, "hey i have smiths in that county 2 send me everything you have!!!"

I don't think so.

First off, I'm not going to send 'everything I have' to someone who hasn't even bothered to identify any possible connection to any of the people I'm researching. Actually, I find that response a bit rude - to demand something without even the offer of providing anything in exchange.

Not that I'm expecting other people to 'send me everything'; I just want to be certain that we might actually have a connection before we waste time posting or sending info about people who may have nothing in common at all. A simple 'I have a John Smith, son of Jack and Catherine, married to Mary Adams in that same area - could we talking about the same people' and give birth and death dates for comparison works much better than demanding people send you stuff. And even if we don't have an immediate connection, it leaves a trail for someone else to find who might have more information for either of us.

A little consideration, some specific information, when writing and answering message board posts goes a long way.

Keeping an open mind

Chances are, at some point in your research, it's going to happen. You find evidence that a couple were not married for at least nine months before the birth of their firstborn, a soldier deserts, a woman is always listed as married in the census listings but her husband is never included in the household, etc.

And you thought that the decay of the moral fiber of mere mortals was a recent thing?

If it will disturb you to find out that your relations have done some not-s0-nice things or things that may embarass you, don't start researching. Because the chances are quite good that you will find something.

Like getting my grandparents' marriage license and realizing that they were only married for seven months before the birth of my aunt. Now, it's not terribly shocking - even taking into account that the marriage happened in 1920 - nor should I probably read too much into it; after all, premature babies are born everyday. And my grandparents had been dead over 30 years when I found this out. Doesn't lessen what few memories I have of them.

I don't fudge the marriage date on my records - I figure that my dad should have been able to figure this out on his own a while ago.

Doing your own work

It's going to happen to at least one of the surnames you're researching - you're looking around online for a new lead and you run smack into someone's posted ancestry that contains your people. You've hit the jackpot, right? You can quit sweating over trying to find out more about this family, right?

Well, no. I hate to be the spoilsport in all of your new-found excitement, but just because someone else has posted a family tree online doesn't make it the truth. You'd be surprised that, if asked, that someone else saw it somewhere else and copied it without verifying one bit of data on it.

But by all means make a note of it. Just follow up on it yourself.

One of Bear's (my husband) surnames is a heavily researched one, with one line in particular documented back to the 1500s. I am able to follow this line from Bear to about the mid 1700s. A researcher, with credentials and a book on the surname to his name, has that mid 1700s family in his research, and I am happily thinking that I've found the line going back to England. I join the surname society, giving the line I've just researched as my verification and tie it in with the line going back to the 1500s.

Only it doesn't tie in. Within two years, other researchers dispute and effectively disprove that Bear's line is part of the 1500s England line. I am basically still at the same point on this line - I have not yet come across the father that will take me further back into the early 1700s.

After this happened, I no longer accept as gospel posted ancestries until I have a chance to check it out for myself. I've gotten a lot of good leads and added several generations by taking a cue from them, but you need to do your own work on the information before claiming them.

If I knew then

Now that I have been at this for a number of years, I find that there are quite a bit of those 'if I knew then what I know now' moments.

Probably the most significant in terms of researching via the internet is using an email address that is not one that use for your personal correspondence.

There are a number of free email opportunities out there. Get one and use it as your subbing address for mailing lists and for online posting. If you subscribe to one of the major internet providers, you usually have the availability of creating several email addresses for your use. Do it.

Cause as just as soon as post to an online message board, chances are you are going to start attracting some spam, as well as attempts to spoof your email address.

What you know

I thought that I should start at the beginning, even though I'm not quite certain when that was. I was visiting my parents - it may have been on the occasion of my brother's marriage to his second wife - and my aunt Ginnie had given me several pages of notes that she and her late sister had put together of 'our family tree'. It was a list of names, grouped by families, of my grandmother's ancestry going back two generations on each side.

I suppose she thought that I could 'do something' with it.

Well, I did.

I started playing with the names online about 1993, when Prodigy was a going thing. After a few months, I got lucky and was contacted by someone who also descended from the same line.

There have been a lot of highs and few lull periods in my search. And there are a lot of places to get advice on how to do your research. Probably the best piece of advice is to start with what you know and go backwards: write down the names and particulars of your parents; then write down their parents' information; and so on and so on for as far back as you or your parents can remember.

Start from there. The 1930 census is available - look up your parents or their parents or even yourself, if you were born by then. And then keep going backwards through the census years and document, document, document.

The one thing that you don't want to get sidetracked on is 'family stories'. Now, I will say that a good number of family lore has a ring of truth in it, and by all means chase them down when you've got some information to work with. However, don't get diverted by the tales of 'my grandmother used to say that we were descended from so-and-so' or 'somewhere back in the line we have Indian blood' or the ever popular 'three brothers arrived by boat to the US and one went north, one went south, and the other went west' when you're just starting out.

When my aunt had given me her notes, she told me that she had heard that we were related to Oliver Wendell Holmes. When I made contact with the distant cousin noted above, she also said that she had been told that the family was related to him. Since a good section of his family line is in print in a book on his father, we quickly concluded that it was probably just a tale based upon our mutual Holmes surname. IF there is a relationship, it's a distant one and more than likely not through the Holmes name.

What I mean is this - don't get bogged down by chasing the unknown when you still have a lot of the basic work to do. Stick with what you know and go backwards and build on it. When you've got some time and you have a few more family names and places to work with, follow grandma's recollections and see if you can build a case for it. It's pretty frustrating to follow a family line, only to conclude that it doesn't come anywhere near yours.