Sunday, August 22, 2010

Celebrating a Finished Project


Have you ever had that wonderful experience of finding a new ancestor or information about somebody on your family tree? You want to jump for joy, do the happy dance and better yet tell somebody. Unless that person you tell is a genealogist, they usually are not interested in your good fortune.

So, genealogists, celebrate with me that today, August 22nd at 3 p.m. I had the wonderful experience of completing my stash of research papers brought home from Salt Lake City in June. It has taken me about ten weeks to navigate through the three foot tall stack, read them, evaluate the information and enter information into my family tree databases on the computer. I have scanned the pertinent papers, which actually was almost everything.

Last year when YGGG #2 and I went to the Family History Library I scanned microfilm to a flash drive. It was a new flash drive. Once home I was able to retrieve almost everything. Suddenly the flash drive crashed only producing error messages that it could not be opened. There was confirmed data there that I no longer could access. Not wanting two weeks of research ending up on a crashed flash drive, this year I decided to make copies which I could read, transcribe, evaluate and scan myself.

While it appears that nothing is left of my three foot stack of papers, I still have plenty of research to do. I am proud to say that I did good research, came home with a multitude of information and extended some of the pedigrees back three or four generations. I have enough leads to keep me busy for months. Well, at least until YGGG #2 and I head back to Salt Lake City in the spring of next year.

Throughout my research I have learned to never say never. You will invariably find an ancestor who did the unusual. Think out of the box and hope to discover that person. You should also review your own research and keep it current. New resources are being located, some digitized or somebody has written a book or article that will interest you. By today's research standards those books or articles are usually documented better than what we used twenty to thirty years ago.

A genealogist's work is never done. There will always be some mystery ancestor teasing and tormenting you to find them. It's like the old childhood game of hide and seek. I am always seeking and you better know that plenty of them are hiding. The challenge of genealogy is what keeps me going.

And going .... And going ... YGGG #1 -- Ruby

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations Ruby! A job well done :-) I've got several, like you, who are teasing and tormenting me, but I hope to get them in the end!

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  2. Oh yes....no such friend as a genealogist...especially one who is connected to you. We have shouted from the rooftops on several occasions as we have discovered tenuous and then confirmed links to our Nicholls, Searle and Holmes families in the UK...and even more, to our Hou Sin family in Amoy China. However, while we are excited, we never forget the wonderful people who assist, the records we are able to access and that we are part of this history.

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