What's that? Oh, it's just our genealogy blowing up in our face, nothing major! Oh boy, how major it is! How can our genealogy blow up you ask? Easily - let me give you some ways you can whiz through your genealogical research and have it all blow into smithereens! Quick Genealogy: 1. Use the internet for your entire research. You've found your family right off. Whow! There it is, done by someone called Irene Idiot who has your line traced all the way back to Adam. Wish she had some documentation, but gosh, she must have had access to all the family Bibles, census records and everything to be that thorough. Just plug that into my files and I'm done. Bet that'll impress my family scoffers who think I can never get through a family tree on my illusive family. That'll show them. Hmmm .... it is strange that some of these dates don't work out; didn't know Great-Aunt Maude had my aunt at 70, but stranger things have happened! Slow Genealogy: 1. Use the internet files available BUT "let the buyer beware". I use them of course, but what I do (just an idea) is to put them in a separate gedcom or file. I check to see if others have submitted on the same line and put there records there too. Then I start trying to pick them apart using my own confirmed records. I write to the individual, who if they really are certain of their information, should write you back and give you source citations. Don't just take it in one fell swoop. Prove, disprove, keep and discard! Quick Genealogy: 2. When you're compiling information, skip the female lines; you're just interested in the male descendency anyway. Slow Genealogy: 2. Hey - you're missing a LOT of good information. Don't you think that the sisters, mothers, wives, aunts and nieces had connections with the family? Weren't family members mentioned in wills, deeds, nearby on census records? What if your great uncle Sam didn't know how to write all that well and his sister-in-law preserved all the family records? Don't forget the females!! Quick Genealogy: 3. I don't need to go to court house myself, someone has already microfilmed or transcribed the whole thing! Ouch! Now I know that many times we are forced to rely on transcriptions of books - that's what I do for a living. But guess what? There are hundreds of books I haven't (and won't be able to) transcribe. What if someone dropped a spot of coffee on the microfilm and the name looks like yours but instead of being John Jumpinghorse it was John Juniper? What if a compilist couldn't read the writing all that well and thought it said that Mary was born in 1792 and it was 1798? Slow Genealogy: 3. If you can see the source do! I know we can't all jump in our private jet and land on the court house lawn, but we can send for a copy of the original if it still exists. Copy costs are extremely reasonable and I have published the addresses of all the court houses in KY in a previous tip. If the original is no longer available, try to prove or disprove the information by other source data. Quick Genealogy: 4. If you're at the library, only look for books that are indexed. Slow Genealogy: 4: Oh yes, we know it's maddening. You're on a limited time schedule, and the book isn't indexed, or only has a surname index. Forget it. Not. We all miss a LOT of good data this way so take the time to scan through the book! Quick Genealogy: 5. Don't worry about looking at the deeds too closely; just get the names of the man who was selling the land and the date. The rest is of no importance. Slow Genealogy: 5. You've got to be kidding! There's a ton of information in those sometimes hard to understand deeds. Who was your ancestor selling to - a relative perhaps? Who owned land around the plot that was being sold? Was your ancestor dividing up his land to his children when they married - could that be his son-in-law? Who was the chain carrier? Likely children of the neighbors or his. Was it a military survey - if so, he had military service (or bought from someone who had seen service) and there might be clues in those records. Was he the original owner and it was coded "first rate land". That means he might have been a soldier in the Revolutionary War as they were given the first rate land. Lots of possibilities. Quick Genealogy: 6. When reading census records, just write down your family's information. Don't worry about the neighbors! Slow Genealogy: 6. Wrong! See #5 above. Families stayed closed together for many years. You can often find families in a certain area all moving together into a new area. You can find the daughter's husband and his families sometimes. You can see why Great-grandpa Kerthud sold his land to someone - they lived right next door on adjacent farms. Sometimes the children of your family hired out as farm hands to neighbors. Quick Genealogy: 7. Don't worry about documentation and backing up your information. My granddaughter will understand what I've said and know where to look. Slow Genealogy: 8. I think you know the answer to this one. We ALL are guilty (aren't we) of not documenting our sources when we first begin our genealogy career. And it will come back to haunt us the rest of our lives. And backing up information, oh yes. How many of us have had a hard drive crash? Or lost our notebooks? I'll give you an example. Back in the early 1970's when I was yet but a child (well sort of), I was on a researching trip with another Gorin couple from Texas. We were in Bowling Green KY or someplace close and had hit pay dirt. We had lugged in all our note books and for hours sat huddled over books and source documents. We were thrilled as we emerged from the catacombs into daylight many hours later. Having two younger children with us, we were tired, they were fussy and we weren't walking a straight line from hours of being bent over microfilm readers and books. We loaded into their rental car and drove back to the town where we were staying ... babbling away as only genealogists can about our finds. When suddenly it dawned on us. Our notebooks were missing. We were about 100 miles away at the time when the other gentleman remembered that when getting into the car and shushing the boys, he had laid the notebooks on top of the car while he unlocked the door. Well, this story had a happy ending as a motorist behind us tried for 20 miles to beep us down. He had seen the papers fly off the top of the car and scurried out to retrieve them all. But we were so busy talking we hadn't heard him. Thankfully, there was an address inside one of the notebooks of any Gorin descendant in Greensburg, KY. He drove over 100 miles out of his way and delivered all the notebooks to this gentleman - thankfully a close kin who was interested in the family tree and recognized the scribbled notes. He in turn mailed them all the way to Texas. We were fortunate, many times, it doesn't work that way. The moral of the story - back up your data whether in written form or on a computer. One keystroke can destroy years worth of research. Our descendants might not know that a disk called Miscellaneous has anything of interest on it. The notebooks can become lost or pitched away as ramblings of a genealogy nut. I try to back up my data on the computer monthly, more often if I've made a lot of changes. One of my daughters who is genealogically blessed has a copy of my files and I of hers. My best friend who shares my passion knows what goes where and who gets what. In closing, ask yourself - are you a quick genealogist or a slow genealogist? Remember the tortoise and the hare? We ALL want to get our family tree done in our lifetime of course. But let's not get lost in the rush and clobber the data. It's rough enough with our not being there and many times it's "how it might have been". But let's make our best effort to make it the best product we can! (c) Copyright 15 August 2002, Sandra K. Gorin. All rights reserved. sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Col. Sandi Gorin Publishing: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/ GORIN worldconnect website: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~sgorin SCKY resource links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html