TIP #545 - WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? Are you a new genealogist? Did you just turn the computer on while the kids weren't watching and discover the internet world of genealogy? Do your family members run out in the yard screaming if you start asking them questions about their lives and memories? Or - are you a seasoned genealogist who feels like they are spinning their wheels, burning rubber, but getting nowhere? Let's look at some of the things you might be doing wrong or might have forgotten over the years. If you are new, the big challenge is spelling genealogy. I have literally roared with laughter when I hear someone trying to say genealogical. I've had it pronounced (and been on many snail-mailing lists with) geology but the best of all happened this week - gynecological. Small difference! Once you've mastered spelling and saying genealogy and genealogical, you are well on your way! Now that you've mastered that, let's look at 8 biggie traps we can fall into: 1 - Are you that gullible? I've stressed this many times over the past few years. Don't believe everything you read or are told. The biography can be wrong. The tombstone could have been transcribed by someone who was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other. The family Bible could have been written in years after the event recorded by someone who can't remember what he did five minutes ago. The funeral home director might have written down the wrong cemetery if a change was made at the last moment. The typed transcription of the will (deeds, marriages, etc) could have been done by a very tired lady or gentleman who really didn't know how to read the old handwriting. Whom can you trust then? Yourself! Check it out! I know there's times you just can't go dashing across the country to see the cemetery yourself, but you can find someone who'll run out and take a digital picture of the stone. You can order the marriage certificate and see it for yourself. Go to the primary source yourself if you can. If you can't: put it in pencil! All the family trees on the web? Wondrous, awesome, appreciated. But do they show their sources? Or have them copped on to someone else's family tree without checking it out? Hmmm. 2 - Your grandmother said that she was the great-great-grand-niece of the woman who was married to the man who was Pocahontas' 4th cousin, 8 times removed? Whew! I call this the celebrity syndrome. This can lead us all over the genealogy map and take us away from our own immediate family. Surely, it's wonderful to think you are related to Daniel Boone or Jefferson Davis. A president or so wouldn't be too bad, even the notorious are nice in retrospect. But, start at the beginning with your confirmed family. If it leads to a world hero or a queen or two - wonderful! But don't start with them, don't get sidetracked up front. In my daughters' pedigrees, I have then connected with Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Meriwether Lewis, and back on one line to a Roman official. They're even fairly closely related to one of the bad guys killed at the Shoot-Out at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ! Looks wonderful, good talking point. But you've got to admit; we're all related if we go back far enough! 3 - Stay away from just dates! Ok, admit it. You are thrilled when you get a marriage date, or a death date; now that line won't be blank on the pedigree chart. But, again, as a repeat of what I've said before … flesh out those ancestors! Try to find out what they did for a living, where they lived, who were their friends and neighbors, where they went to church and what was going on in the world around them! When I get bored, really bored, I'll pick an ancestor and see where they lived and the time frame. Then I'll go on the web and do a search for that town or locality and read up on when it was settled, what it looks like, what the crops are, what the weather is normally like, special events that have occurred there … and then I place my family there. Were they there during the cholera epidemic? Did their crops survive the big tornado? Were they aware that there was a war going on in Europe (or someplace) that they might have eagerly awaited news on? Were they living in an area effected by the Civil War? Did they have a son or sons who fought in the Revolutionary War or was at a recorded battle? Read up on the battle - see what happened - who won, what privations were there? Dates are exciting - people's lives are more exciting! 4 - Have you paid $49.95 for your personalized family tree and a cheap wooden crest of your family tree? Oops - I know some of you surely have; I was roped in very early in my genealogy searching days as I was trying to shake out some nuts from the tree! Avoid them like the plague!!! They are rip-offs. They normally have some generic "history" of that surname, a generic coat of arms and then page after page of addresses and phone numbers of everyone with that surname in America. You can find that yourself if you try elsewhere, for free. The family coat of arms? Ours was for the Goring family of whom we have no connection. There was a section on "the oldest Gorin in America", "how many in America share the same surname", etc. Stick with reputable sources - ancestry.com, rootsweb, worldconnect, Family History Libraries on line, etc. There will still be mistakes there, and some are very costly, but at least they are not promising you the world and giving you junk! These rip-off companies change their name, they move their offices, they are fined but like a bad penny, they keep coming back. 5 - Fact or Fiction - Family Legends. Oral history is wonderful; it preserves the memories of those who have lived through it or heard the stories told over the years. Don't trust them without proving them out. Great-great-grandma always said that great-great-grandpa was big in electricity. Sure, he sat in the electric chair! If Uncle John was known to hang around a lot; was it by a noose on a gallows? Was he really that rich, was she really courted by the princes of Europe? I love oral history. I love hearing my family talk of the past and thankfully my family had good memories and didn't embellish. But stories grow over the years. Remember the old game we used to play where you whisper something in someone's ear, they turn around and whisper it in the ear of the one next to them? By the time it got to the original person, the story bears absolutely no likeness to what you started. You can use them in your family books of course, but always add a note that this is the way gg-grandmother remembered it and you cannot confirm it. Maybe it's better not to put it in public records at all because once in print, it is perpetuated forever (like the emails that you receive all the time about some warning or some reward if you forward this on to 10 people and please don't break the chain). It's hard to erase once it's public! 6 - Or, have you fallen into the trap of surname spellings? Have you pulled your hair out because you can't find any reference to Clarke? How about Clark? Oh no, you think, we're not related to the Clark's, our name is spelled Clarke! Or maybe Mathews? Can't be, our name is Matthews! When we first start, we're thrilled when we find our surname ANYPLACE, especially if you have an unusual surname or a small family. But please, think wild! These clerks didn't always write all that well. Those transcriptionists didn't always know the spelling and put it down phonetically. Or there is a smear in the page that makes the name look one way or the other. I recently met a dear family whose mother had tried all her life to learn about her family - spelled Goren. The son stumbled over my name and took a chance and emailed me even though our name is spelled Gorin. All he knew was the name of one of his ancestors who was in Warren Co KY. Could I help? You betcha, I handed him his family tree for many generations! Somehow the name had been written wrong in the mid 1850's and everyone started spelling their names that way. What a reunion we had. Write down all the crazy variations of the spelling you can think of and go fishing! 7 - Now - I'm going to hit you right between the eyes. It's one of those "do as I say and not as I did" things. Write down your sources! If I took a poll of those on this mailing list of about 1800 people, I bet that 1,799 will shudder on this one because they're as guilty as I. Dash into a library. Find a book. Find a citation. Write down the citation. Dash out the door because the husband is getting impatient and the kids are screaming so loudly with boredom/hunger/fatigue that the hubby is afraid he'll be charged with child abuse. Six months pass. You pick up your notes. You've been to 5 other towns, visited 22 cemeteries and when you look at that note - which has become critical in your research - all you can say is "Where did I find THAT?" In a library, write down the name of the library, the date you were there, what book or record contained the information (including publisher's name and address in case you want to buy the book later). If at a cemetery, write down the date, name of the cemetery, directions for getting there, condition of the stone, who was buried beside them (could be kin you know!), and take a picture or so. If you fail point #7, you will hate yourself forever and don't expect that husband to drive you 300 miles back to find it! 8 - Don't delay!!!!! Relatives don't live forever and one of the most common things I've had said to me in teaching genealogy is "if I'd only asked the questions of my parents before they died … or lost their memory." I shake my head in agreement; been there, done that. But I learned pretty fast and didn't fail in too many relatives but I still could have asked more. My precious Dad who died 9 years ago, used to tell me stories, but many were repeats of traumatic events in his life. I worked up a book for him for Christmas in 1995 with a lot of family pictures, a simplified family tree and what history I knew. He looked at the pictures eagerly, and being almost blind, couldn't get through all the stories. But it got him talking about different memories brought to the surface by the pictures. 14 days after Christmas he was gone without warning. My grandfather didn't like to answer questions about genealogy stuff, but my dear aunt (who trained me in this crazy biz) finally left him a tape recorder, showed him how to use it, and just suggested that when he felt up to, just talk into the tape recorder and tell her anything he remembered about his growing up in southern Illinois. I never saw my grandfather alive again, but what do I have? A copy of a 90 minute tape with my Grandfather telling about how he met my beloved Grandmother who died when I was nine years old, of my mother, singing old coal mining songs, where they lived, the problems they faced. What a cherished gift he gave his family but just sitting down and pushing a button. I hope that something I wrote here will help you, the new researcher, from getting side-tracked or discouraged. And for the seasoned researcher, a reminder of how easy it is to get off the beaten path. © Copyright 16 June 2005, Sandra K. Gorin Sandi's Puzzlers: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gensoup/gorin/puz.html SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html