Simple Tips to Maximize Your Genealogy Research

Recently, I volunteered to provide free genealogy assistance through a local genealogy society to which I belong.  I try to help twice a year – fall and spring – which is advertised throughout our county.  Every time I attend, I learn something new about genealogy practices.  Here’s my latest revelations:

1.  Keep your email accounts current – My first “client” had gotten everyone in her family to test.  That included her siblings, children and herself.  She had a DNA question for me but she couldn’t readily access any of her accounts because she had used an old email address she no longer had. I recommended she contact the DNA test companies to update her records.  But that led to the next problem:

2.  Know where you did your DNA test and when – She recalled she had last tested with 23andMe but when we clicked “Forgot your password?”, it was sent to her current email  The problem was that kit  was for her daughter.  She then recalled she had purchased the kit two Christmas’ ago intending to use it but gave it to her daughter instead.  We tried FTDNA, but couldn’t get in because that was the older email account.  She thought she had used Ancestry.com for her sister but it turned out those were her results.  Clicking around used up a good deal of time we could have spent analyzing the results.  I shared how I save my info; I use Excel to keep a list of the Kit numbers, date the test was ordered, who the test was for and the company that was used.  On a second tab, I record contact information from others after the results are returned.  This way, I avoid duplication of effort.

3.  Try, Try Again – Last fall I assisted a woman trying to find an obituary from the mid-1950’s.  Her grandmother had been active in the community where she resided but she couldn’t find the obit in the nearest big city newspaper.  I had recommended she contact a research librarian to find out the names of newspapers that were publishing at the time in that location and where the microfilm of those papers were held.  She said, “I called and someone said they’d get back with me but nobody did.”  Here’s a lesson we all need to heed, don’t think that call is going to happen now, months later.  Call again.  Ask to be connected with the Reference Desk.  If a few days pass with no results, email.  I love the Ask-A-Librarian online contact.  Not only do you have a record that you made the request, it saves you a phone call and having to spell out the surname while the librarian is trying to take notes.  

4.  Two Heads Are Better Than One  – I love paper but I don’t love having to sort through a ream and a half of every item ever discovered on a brick wall ancestor.  In other words, be organized.  If the information had been presented in time line order, we could have gotten through it much more expeditiously.  The woman used the method of last found information was placed on top.  I recommended she sort the information on a table by the year that the record was created.  Sure, the immigration paperwork completed when the ancestor was in their mid 30’s had the date and place of birth but keeping the documents in created age order helps to determine the accuracy of the information found.  She told me her method drove her uncle nuts but she was so into the hunt for records she didn’t like to take the time to organize them.  I recommended she  get with her genealogy buddy, the uncle, and see if he was more adept at organization.  Then, they could put their heads together and make a timeline on paper (she hates software programs) to find holes.  This approach also helps in finding information that was out there that you initially glossed over because you focused on something else.  For example, she had the ship manifest so she knew where the ship sailed from.  She also had a birth location from the immigration record.  She had scant information between the birth and the immigration.  I recommended reading the history of the area at the time the ancestor was born to determine if the family had relocated soon after (hint, it was probably the potato famine).  If she wasn’t interested in that type of research, her partner could do it and then they could discuss where she could research further.

5.  Know What You Want to Know – Your research question is imperative.  “I want to know everything about my great grandfather” is not a question.  You might be able to eventually get to the point where you know a lot about your great grandfather but to do so, you’ve got to start with a name or a place and a time from which to build.  If you start small, you don’t get overwhelmed and quit.  INMHO, that’s why people give up on genealogy.  It is a practice in patience, analysis, and sometimes, dumb luck.  You can control two of the three components.  My recommendation for this individual was to focus on one area of a person’s life, like their career, and see what you can find.  Then move to why that individual held that job.  Perhaps there was indentured or apprenticed paperwork.  Maybe the great grandfather or another relative was in the same line of work.  Here’s an example I shared; my husband comes from a long line of carpenters.  The original carpenter, however, didn’t build homes.  He was a ship’s carpenter.  That would have been a modern job when ships provided the largest means of transportation.  His son was a ship’s carpenter early on in his career but switched as he aged to building homes.  That man’s son moved farther inland and continued with the trade.  That original research question could disclose a wealth of family information over generations.  It pays to be specific about what you’re looking for.

Happy Hunting!

An Odd Genealogy Connection

I’m going to be helping out at my local genealogy society’s Ask A Genealogist Day today so I’ve got to make this brief.  I had the strangest connection a few weeks ago and I wanted to share the weird workings of the internet.  

I have an online presence beyond this blog and my website since I keep my trees public.  Usually I get connections through Ancestry.com, followed by MyHeritage.com, then through my website which is my historical home for my blogs.  Sure, I get connections through other social media platforms and occasionally, from someone Googling an ancestor and my info comes up but the latest connection was by using Newspapers.com.  

An unrelated gentleman from Scotland is writing a book on those who left  Beauly in the late 1700’s.  He discovered through Newspapers.com that I had saved a newspaper clipping from the Philadelphia [PA] Packet dated 9 Oct 1775 regarding the ship, the Clementina, arriving and that there were many workers ready for indenture.  I suspected that my 4th great grandfather, John Morison, was on that ship.  I could be wrong, though.  There were several John Mor[r]ison’s in Philadelphia at the same time and I saved every shred of evidence on all of them hoping to sort them out and discover which was my real great grandfather.  

I had mistakenly thought the author who connected with me had found my information on Ancestry but he said he didn’t have a subscription and his local library didn’t have one, either.  I was flabbergasted when he told me that he was using Newspapers.com and it flagged that I had saved the article and provided my contact info.  I didn’t know that was even an option.  

I’m glad it was as he has been a wealth of information and let me know that my Morison family most likely wasn’t always using that surname as two Morrison families originated in the mid 1600’s from other lines.  He also gave me lots of information on another Morrison family that emigrated on the same ship.  Peter, his wife and daughters were most likely connected with two other Morrison teenagers on the same boat.  Peter had been what we’d call today a game warden overseeing salmon.  I had thought, with no proof, that the families emigrating were all related but couldn’t find proof.  It’s because both boys later joined the Revolution and were taken prisoner in New York.  Both parents requested visitation to them while they were held on a prison ship.  The author was able to provide me their baptism records, too.  I had no idea that not all children were recorded in Scottish church records since parents had to pay for the recording.  Looks like Peter had the eldest children recorded but stopped after the 3rd child.  

The author was a wealth of information and I’m so glad we were able to correspond for a few weeks sharing our findings and analyzing what we had found together.  We’ve reached the conclusion that ALL the Morrisons in Philadelphia from 1775 to 1800 were related.  There was a father-son both named John who must have come some time earlier; both were in the metal trades.  Then the next wave of Morrisons came on the Clementina.  We suspect that John, a weaver, was the brother of Peter.  John came with a wife and son.  The wife was noted to be a spinster by 1790 so I believe he had died.  She and the adult son died in 1793 from the “plague”, a mosquito epidemic most likely yellow fever.  Peter’s son, John, likely is the man who comes and goes from the records as he was a ship’s carpenter.  I still haven’t figured out who my John is but I’m working on it (just not today). 
 Even so, I’m closer because of this unlikely connection thanks to Newspapers.com.  Happy Hunting!

My Tree Tags – Trying Out Ancestry.com’s New Feature

Two weekends ago I tried using My Tree Tags on Ancestry.com and I think you’ll like this new feature.  For years, I’ve wished that there was a way to flag my ancestors so I could create various lists of my folks.  This feature will do that and more.

To try it for yourself, click on Extras on the ribbon (it’s the last entry).  Then, click on My Tree Tags.  Notice it’s in Beta so it’s still being improved.  I had no problems with the feature so the IT Department must have worked the bugs out long before they made the Beta available to the general public.

I know, you’re thinking, “Why should I waste my time Beta testing when it isn’t a finished program?”  Simply because you still have time to provide your insights to make the program even better!  You have the option to give feedback using a short survey.

Once you click Enable you are good to go.  The first change you’ll notice is that the former search button for individuals is now called Tree Search.  When you click it, the Tree Search looks different then it did:

This threw me for a minute but it works the same  – just type in the individual you are trying to located in the search box and they’ll display as a drop down as they did before.

To use My Tree Tags, click Filters and it will display the tag choices:

Each Filter contains more items to explore.  I personally like the Custom filter as I created one I titled “Lineage” which allows me to identify the people I selected to join various lineage societies.  In the Custom feature, you can even write a description of what the title means to you so others, if your tree is public, can better understand your definition.  I’m thinking of identifying careers as I’d like to analyze those that followed a particular career path, such as teacher, minister, or farmer.

Once you’ve selected tags, they will display on the Facts page under your ancestor’s identifying information in white letters in a blue box:

Only 3 tags will show.  If more were selected a + and a number appears on the right; click to display the other tags that were selected:

Now here’s the awesome part – say you want to find all of your military people.  When you click on Military it will display all others in your tree that you’ve identified with the same tag:

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how the list is ordered; it’s not by alpha of last name or by dates.  It doesn’t seem to be by how I identified people, either.  

If you goof, it’s simple to correct an error.  The edit button is the pencil in the circle at the end of the tag.  Click it and change – add or delete – whatever you’d like.

IMHO, the best part is that you can identify if you are working on a line and making a hypothesis.  I became so frustrated with brick wall (another tag you can select) ancestors that I was then researching (currently researching is also a tag) that I stopped adding to my tree as I did the research because someone would copy the information and before I knew it, it had spread like a wildfire.  I’m hopeful that tagging will alert someone that the information is not verified yet.  

If you decide you don’t want to use the feature, go back to Extras on the ribbon and disable it.  You’re back to where you were.  

Identifying Tree Errors – A New Approach

My online family tree is aging and just like we humans need as we get older, regular check ups are important to maintain its vigor.  I think I just discovered a different approach to identify errors to keep my tree robust.

My first computerized tree was done on a TI99 home computer.  I had to insert a cartridge to view the genealogical program (which is now in my attic). In 1995,we had switched over to a desktop system and we were online thanks to AOL.  I downloaded PAF from FamilySearch.org and spent a few weekends transferring my info from the old software to the new.  I’ve been transferring that same tree as it grew ever since.

Around 1997, I created a tree on Rootsweb (now owned by Ancestry.com).  My old tree is frozen in cyberspace and I cringe at some of the errors I’m not able to correct.  I believe that’s the only tree I’ve got stuck in time.

Over the years I’ve transferred the root tree to various online sites – Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, MyHeritage.com, FindMyPast.com, Geneanet.com, WikiTree.com, and AmericanAncestors.  I’ve used Legacy Family Tree, RootsMagic, and Family Tree Maker software to help identify and correct errors.  Last weekend I found another source to fix mistakes in lines I haven’t looked at in years.

Geneanet.com allows you to view tree statistics, whether you’re a member or not.  Simply click the down arrow next to your tree’s name which accesses the menu.  Under the heading Family History, click Family Tree Statistics.  Although the number of people in your tree with the same first name is interesting, it’s not going to fix errors.  (As an aside, the largest number of my peeps are named John and Mary, just like my grandparents).  To find errors, click “The 20 who lived the longest.”  There I discovered I had an ancestor that lived over 500 years and he wasn’t named Methuselah.  Clearly, I had entered John Clark’s death date in error, typing 1918 for 1418. 

The next individual, Thomas Eaton, had lived for 311 years but not really.  He had been pruned once from his line so I deleted him.  He was just an unlinked soul lost in my tree. 

Now click “The 20 oldest persons still alive” and you’ll be able to identify folks you know have passed but you haven’t found their death date.  My oldest was Melba L. Jones born in 1899.  Using FindAGrave, I discovered she died 2 Jan 1993.  I like how this feature helps me keep my tree current on lines I don’t check often. 

I like that only 20 questionable individuals are provided at a time so it makes the task less onerous.  It’s still a pain to maintain trees at various sites so I’ve been keeping one current which is linked to my desktop and then every 6 months, update the others.  In the interim, when people find me at the other sites, I just redirect them to my always maintained tree.  

Now that I’ve Spring Cleaned my tree, I’m ready for more research.  Happy Hunting!

Ancestry.com New Features

I tried Ancestry.com’s new feature, Thru Lines, last weekend and I’m not impressed.  If you aren’t sure what it’s about, you can watch their brief video here.  What set me off was the comment “For a few short minutes and without doing any research, you can have a whole new network of ancestors and living relatives.”  Not in my opinion!  If only genealogy were so simple. 

Here’s the issue I have and which I wrote in my survey result to Ancestry – say everyone in your family believes that your shared Great Great Grandpa was John Smith Jr..  You all know this because it said so in an unsourced family book written in the 1940’s.  Some of your older relatives even remember the author and he was an honest, hard working genealogist.  He knew that John Smith Jr. was his Great Grandpa because his mom told him so and she never lied.  So there, it’s the truth and nothing but the truth.

Now along comes Ancestry’s Thru Lines and since everyone copied everyone else’s tree on Ancestry because it’s simple to do so, everyone has John Smith Jr.as their 2nd time Great Grandpa and now everyone’s DNA results PROVE it.  Except, it proves nothing at all.

All Thru Lines proves is that you are all related.  If everyone has a wrong name listed everyone with shared DNA will connect to that wrong name.  Perhaps John Smith Jr. was adopted.  All of the shared descendants are related to the adopted individual but not to John Smith Sr.  Thru Lines is going to give you other relatives you “might” be related to.  This just perpetuates the wrong information.

I tried it with one of my adult children’s DNA results and it connected to my husband’s grandmother.  Was that accurate?  Yes, because far flung family members have also tested and they connect to grandmother’s parents.  We also have the paper documentation of the relationship.  All Thru Lines did in this example was confirm what my documentation already showed. 

Two other features are in the works, New and Improved DNA Matches (I can only hope) and Tree Tags, which is something I’ve been wishing for a long long time.  Tree tags is adding info you’d like others to know, such as – “This is not a confirmed relationship.” I would absolutely love that.  I actually wanted a color coded option so I could make my confirmed relationships in green and my tentative ones in yellow or red.  I understand that some folks have difficulty with color so tagging is a nice alternative.  As soon as I’m able to test these features, I’ll blog my opinion. 

Three Resources You Might Not Have Tried Yet

Last weekend, my local genealogical society held their annual seminar with the main presenter being D. Johsua Taylor.  Josh mentioned 3 resources that I had never used so I’m passing the information along as they may be helpful in your researching.  

Warning – the first and last isn’t readily available so it might take you some time to find them in your locale.

Early American Imprints is a collection in two series of single page documents, such as advertisements, pamphlets and sermons, from 1690-1800 and 1801-1819.  There is a searchable database produced by Readex.  Unfortunately for me, there is no facility in my county that has access but I did email a library at my closest state university and discovered they do have it and allow the general public to view it.  I can’t wait to check it out!

Archive Grid, owned by OCLC, is like WorldCat and this free resource is available to you from home.  The beauty of Archive Grid is that you can obtain catalog descriptions from collections housed around the world, not just the U.S.  Through a key word search or by browsing a selected topic, who knows what genealogical gems you may uncover.  I’m thinking this might be a wonderful way to shed light on some of my brick wall ancestors who left little records behind.  

ArchiveFinder is similar to Archive Grid but is available only through libraries.  I haven’t found a local source yet and will ask my library consortium if they could fund it in the future.  Why I would like to check it out is because the database includes manuscript collections that I wouldn’t know are available without this resource.  Josh recommended asking your library if they are a part of C19 – libraryspeak for an index that libraries often subscribe to.  ArchiveFinder is available with a subscription to C19.  

GenealogyAtHeart Hint – keep a Word doc or spreadsheet on your computer of resources you want to search for at various archives so when you’re headed out the door on an errand, you have a list of what to check while you’re passing by that library.  Sure, I call or email the library if it’s urgent but often I come across a book I’d like to review for a possible connection to an ancestor I’m researching but the facility is closed at the time I discover it or I just don’t want to make the drive to the next county for just a look.  I actually print the lists and keep them in my car so if I happen to be going that way, I can stop in.  I record the call number (from WorldCat), the book title, the author, the publication year, and most importantly – the name of the ancestor I think it pertains to.  I can always look up the call number or title in the library but if I can’t remember who I’m looking up, it’s a waste of my time.  Don’t forget to remove the resource from the list on your computer when you get home.  Happy Hunting!

Making Ancestry.com Ghost Hints Disappear

I finally discovered a simple way to remove Ancestry.com ghost hints.  Ghost hints are those phantom records that once were available but for several reasons – maybe the original poster removed them or Ancestry no longer supports the source of the record – are now not available.  Those hints show up under the “All hints” area but when you click on one to view, a pop up lets you know they are no longer available.  They then remain a grayed out phantom forever; a reminder of what once was but as Poe so eloquently noted, “Quoth the raven, nevermore.”  

I first noticed this problem several years ago and contacted Ancestry Customer Service.  The rep said she had no idea what I was talking about as no one else ever called about that situation.  Yeah, I bet.  She recommended logging out and then back in.  Of course, that didn’t make them disappear.  A few months later, at a genealogical conference, I learned I was not alone and that these mysteriously disappearing records and photos had been named Ghost Hints.  I also found threads online that others had reported it and that Ancestry was working on a solution.

Fast forward several months and in speaking with an Ancestry rep at a national conference, I learned that Ancestry, periodically, would correct the situation by doing a refresh on their end.  That did seem to work but for the past year and a half, even with their refresh, seven Ghost Hints remained.  I finally discovered how to get rid of them and it’s very simple.  Just follow these steps:

1.  On the ribbon, click on All Hints.  The counter is inaccurate and I haven’t figured out how to correct that yet.  Here’s what mine looked like when I really had no active hints and four Ghost Hints for three individuals:

2.  Here’s the four Ghost hints for three individuals, all have been showing “more than 90 days ago.”

3.  I’m going to step you through removing the Ghost Hint now…Click on the down arrow on the right and then click”View his Hints”

4.  This will take you to the hint tab on the individual’s page.  In the example above, we’re on John Hollinghead’s hint tab:

You can see that there is no hint available as the source info section is blank.  To get rid of these two pesky Ghost Hints, simply click “Ignore”

5.  After clicking the page will refresh as shown below:

6.  Now go back to the ribbon on the right hand side and click the leaf icon.  It shows I have no recent hints.  I still had two more Ghost Hints to remove, however, so I’m going to click on “See all recent hints in…Main Tree” to get rid of them, too:

7.  Back to the All Hints area, you can see that John Hollingshead’s Ghost Hints have vanished!  I’m going to follow the steps above to remove the last two remaining Ghost Hints:

8.  I successfully removed the Ghost Hints but notice that the counter on the left side and the leaf counter on the ribbon at the top are still wrong.  Funny how the two counters don’t even agree on the total.  The left side notes that I have one record and six photos for a total of seven All Hints.  Math is correct although there is no record or photo hints appearing.  The leaf icon claims I have 8 hints but when I click on the leaf, it states I have no hints – as shown in step 6 above.  Perhaps when Ancestry does their updates the counter will correct itself.  At least the counters have stopped showing I have negative hints as in the past, the counter sometimes displayed a negative number.   

I’m not sure when Ancestry fixed the problem. As of two years ago, the response about the Ghost Hint problem was the following:

I found a YouTube video from November 2017 that allows you to make the hints disappear but it involves going into the code.  You can view that video here.  Sometime after, Ancestry must have come up with the way I just discovered.  Really simple to make them disappear now – thanks, Ancestry.com!

Sparking Ancestor Passion in an Unusual Way




I’ve written before about the many ways I’ve tried to get my family interested in learning about their ancestors. Swedish Death Cleaning was the key for one of my relatives who had recently purchased a new home and was needing furniture – along with the sewing machine cabinet went great grandma’s hand made doilies, a thread chest with great great grandma’s wooden sock darner and several homemade quits and afghans. I’ve helped several relatives apply to lineage societies and although they gained membership, I was disappointed that the result wasn’t a larger interest in learning about other ancestors.  Although I never tried this trick, I did contemplate  hiding cash in a book I wrote about three generations in one line thinking that if the receivers got that far in the story, they would like the extra reward.


What occurred last weekend was unintentional and what made me come to the conclusion that making a connection has to evoke a personal passion in the living; one that you might not even know exists.  


We had a family gathering that was unexpected – the adult kids happened to just show up at our house at the same time.  Since I had been hard at work checking relationships to see if I could qualify for a new society, I made a note of where I was in the pedigree and then joined the rest of my family.  While we were all catching up on careers, shared friends and the state of the world, I mentioned I was confirming relationship to Madog ap Maredudd, Prince of Powys, who was the last prince of all Powys, Wales.  I certainly didn’t expect the response I got from one of my children…”He’s a real guy?!  I always thought he was made up.”  I replied that Madog was indeed real and his grandfather, Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, was widely regarded as one of the most just kings who revised Welsh law making inheritance fairer for those that were not rich.


The response from my kid, “Wow, I didn’t think the guy was real.”  I asked both kids where they had heard of Madog.  Evidently, he had been mentioned in Madeleine L’engle’s Wrinkle in Time series.  Turns out, the protagonist in the series discover that there is a lineal relationship and by learning about a treacherous incident in which Madog’s brother was involved in, saves the world from destruction.  So, my adult kids were interested in how Madog was their 23rd grandfather.  


No way I could ever predict a science fiction novel they read in 4th grade would light a genealogical fire in them two decades later but it did.  We live in a very strange world, indeed.  

Here Today Gone Tomorrow, The Ever Changing Access to Online Records

Ahh, the balance of the universe!  Maybe it’s just me but I’ve noticed lately that the more that the web grows genealogy sources, the more sources I relied on in the past have disappeared.  I’m definitely not a doomsday prophet but I found my experiences yesterday as a wake up call to change some of my practices in the future. If I don’t I’ll be facing disaster someday. Here’s what happened…

I was going back over a line I hadn’t visited in five years.  When I do that, I start with my gateway ancestor, in this case, Mary Ann Hollingshead, and I recheck my saved sources.  I predominately use Ancestry.com so I click on the Gallery feature and look at the documents I previously uploaded.  Then I go to the hints area and look at all that I had saved as “Maybe” or “No.”  I always keep the hint setting on but my tree is so large I don’t have time or desire to check every hint that populates. Weekly, as part of my genealogy cleaning chores, I go through any hints that are shown over the previous seven days and just dismiss them.  They don’t really go away; they are saved under the individual that the system matched them to.  That’s a nice underused feature, I believe, as you can always go through them at your leisure to examine each one closely when you have the time.  

Next, I go back to Facts and check the citations that I had linked to the timeline.  For sources that I created from outside of Ancestry.com records, I always but the link so that I can easily review the information and note if anything has changed.  That’s where I noticed the first of the serious changes to the web.

I went to Francis Hollingshead and was checking the link I had made to FamilySearch.org for England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975.  I used to be able to see the actual page of the document but not any longer:

As you can see on the right side above, I must go to the Family History Center to view.  Now I wish I had saved every FamilySearch.org document I have ever found and that’s a lot!  It never dawned on me that the information would not be readily available from home.  All I could think of was Job 1:20 “…The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away…”.

I did notice that some of the documents were available through FindMyPast.com so I could (and will) go there to snip and save them to my Gallery but not all can be found that way, as the one above shows.  

As I went farther back on the Hollingshead line I discovered that British History Online now charges for many documents that once were available for free:

Back in the day, they asked for support through a donation but now they have Premium, Gold, 5-year Gold and 10-year Gold access.  What I was trying to reach was Gold level.  I only needed one document so it wasn’t worth it to me to purchase a subscription.  I had saved in my citation a transcript which is fine for my purposes but if I had known it would go away, I would have snipped and saved the original and transcribed under it.  Live and Learn!

Yes, I did try the Wayback Machine to see if I could gain access to these docs and the answer is unfortunately, no.  For the British History Online document, only once was it saved and that was in 2015 but you had to log in to access.  I tried my old log on but it no longer works.  

The next issue I discovered was of a document I had saved in my Gallery.  I had the page snipped but I had neglected to include the book’s title page.  No worries, I thought, as the link was for Internet Archives.  Of course, I happened to hit them just as they went down for maintenance so I couldn’t get the information I needed.  The book wasn’t available through any of the other online sources so this just required me to wait awhile to get what I needed.

It’s not just older documents that are no long accessible.  Google+, which ties to my Blogger account, is disappearing soon.  With it goes all of my former reader comments.  I’m glad that I save all of my posts to my genealogyatheart.com website so they will still be available but unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about the comments.

Genealogy is definitely a practice in patience.  Sometimes it’s years before you find the record you seek or connect with a long lost relative that holds the key to discovering a generation back.  With organizational changes, patience needs to extend to how we save the documents we find at the time we make the discovery.  I’m fortunate that there were only a few records I wasn’t able to access in the 18 generations I checked.  I’m hopeful, going forward with the procedure changes I plan to implement in my practice, that won’t be an issue again.

UPDATE 23 Feb 2019:  I spoke today with a FamilySearch rep at a local genealogist conference I attended.  He stated that some of the records are no longer available from home due to copyright agreements with the holders of the original data.  He also stated, if you have found yourself having difficulty viewing some of the records online because they become fuzzy, simply record where you are then click out of the database and go back in.  When you restart go directly to the record you left off and it should be viewed clearly.  If not, you can report it.

Growing Your Genealogy with Living Family Member Interaction

Zen needed

Sometimes, you just have to practice self control when you’re around your family.  (‘m referring to the living ones and not the death ones who left no documents or photos behind.)  I bet, as the family historian, you’ve encountered some of the following situations:

  • They just make one excuse after another for not going into (Fill in the blank – attic, basement, closet, storage facility, garage) to retrieve the (Fill in the blank – birth certificate, Bible, photo)  that you desperately need yet…
  • You receive a frantic call at an inopportune time wanting to know if your family is related to a celebrity
  • Your family expects you to help them for FREE join a lineage society
  • Even though you’ve shared all the discoveries you’ve found and ignored the glassy eyed bored looks you’ve gotten in return, they want some arcane piece of info on some distant ancestor because someone at work or some show on TV made them think about that story you told, only you have no knowledge of what they’re talking about because they’ve jumbled different people and events together in their minds
  • You’ve bought the DNA kit, helped them follow the simple instructions, mailed it back for them and monitor it and they don’t believe the results (even though your DNA and theirs is a close match)

Those are my top 5 pet peeves and over the past holiday season, each of them raised their ugly heads.  Two of the above became the most problematic.  

The first situation was the result of Ancestry’s recent upgrade of their DNA results.  With the old results, one family member showed more Swedish than anyone else in the family.  As a genealogist, my take on it is “So what” as we all know that the percentages are fluid since they’re based on the pool tested.  As the pool grows, so the results change.  I have explained this in the past but I guess somehow I’m not doing a good job.  In my family’s case, the updated stats shifted the percent slightly making the former number 1 in second place and the the former second place in first.  No big deal, right?  Evidently it was.  Instead of just asking for my take on the change, the newly placed number 1 decided that the results were questionable and so purchased a test from a competitor.  Of course, the competitor’s pool was different and the results varied but in this individual’s head, those results were more valid (because they hadn’t been updated yet).  Since the percents of test two were even less than the first test results, the individual became upset at all the ‘misleading info and the waste of money.”

It was time to take a deep breath.  I ignored the waste of money part since I had paid for the first test and the individual had gotten a deep discount on the second test.  I brought up my own results from several companies and showed how the results vary and again explained why.  I don’t think it got through any better than the previous times I’ve explained but it did end the conversation on a positive note.  

The second situation was a family member who asked me to write down the birth and death dates for two ancestors.  When I did, I was informed that I was wrong.  I had to bite my tongue to not respond, “If you know the information why are you asking me?”  Instead, after a pause, I asked if the individual wanted a copy of the birth and death certificates.  The response was no.  I then asked why the information was being questioned.  The answer was it didn’t seem like it had been that long ago when the individuals died.  Sure, as we age, time seems to go much quicker.  In this situation, I owned the problem as I jumped to the conclusion that the asker doubted my research when that wasn’t the case at all.  

Family can be a help in our genealogy quest – not just with gaining names and dates of ancestors but in showing us character areas where we need to grow.