Hang in there!

Nathanb1

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Smack dab in the heart of Texas
Watching my favorite show on PBS tonight, Finding Your Roots, I got a nice surprise. Clint Black (the singer) was on and apparently had a lot of family just in the 10th Texas Cavalry (who, of course, were later dismounted--I consider that bait and switch!). The Corley brothers were much like other families serving in the war, with some disastrous consequences. I'll let you watch the episode. Clint knew nothing about these guys, apparently, so like many of us, he's gone down the wormhole...I suspect he'll be researching a lot of his other relatives who probably fought. I know sometimes it seems overwhelming, but hang in there and keep banging away at that brick wall. Sometimes they crumble suddenly after years of frustration.

 
I know sometimes it seems overwhelming, but hang in there and keep banging away at that brick wall. Sometimes they crumble suddenly after years of frustration.
Sometimes the answer is in stuff you already have too. That has happened to me a couple of times. A couple of times I went back and re-read information and documents that I already had and some wall busting things jumped out at me. It's not that I hadn't seen them before but the significance didn't register in previous readings.
 
I love that show. I am sometimes impressed at what they can find hidden. More often I am a bit dumbfounded at how little people know about their own history!
I can relate in a way because I never met any of my grandparents and neither my mother or father really talked about their parents or childhoods (other than the rare comment: e.g. "my father didn't like raspberries either"). I didn't even know my grandparents' names. After mom died and I retired I decided to find out if they were ax murderers or something (they weren't) and what was going to be a simple look to find the grandparents turned into years of serious research, sometimes using professionals.

I now know that many people don't know much about their family but what surprises me is not that they don't know but how many really don't care. I know many also don't have any interest in history in general much less their family history. They just see it as something that's over and not something that has any effect on their current lives. It's one of those things I know many people feel but I can't understand.

How can you really understand the current situation if you don't have any idea how we got here ? And why wouldn't one be at least just curious how they got here ?
 
The annoying thing about that show--and similar ones--it that they leave you with the impression that it's all so easy. Just push the right button and voila! It doesn't work that way.😰

Once, while sorting yard sale goods at the genealogy library, a man came rushing down the stairs and said to me: "You're the one who knows about Norwegian genealogy, right? Well my grandmother just told me that her father came from Norway--and I want to know all about him!" Name? I don't know--Olsen, I think. Where in Norway? How do I know? When I told him that I'd need some more information, he responded "Well, Louis Gates would have known!"
 
The annoying thing about that show--and similar ones--it that they leave you with the impression that it's all so easy. Just push the right button and voila! It doesn't work that way.😰

Once, while sorting yard sale goods at the genealogy library, a man came rushing down the stairs and said to me: "You're the one who knows about Norwegian genealogy, right? Well my grandmother just told me that her father came from Norway--and I want to know all about him!" Name? I don't know--Olsen, I think. Where in Norway? How do I know? When I told him that I'd need some more information, he responded "Well, Louis Gates would have known!"
I agree that those genealogy shows make it out to be way too easy. I suspect that they carefully screen candidates and that there's actually more known than they make it out to be before they start (so as to make it seem so miraculous). How fun would it be for famous person X to say "all I know is grandpa was named Bob Smith and lived in Chicago." I bet that show wouldn't work. And of course one has to have access to professional genealogists in just the right places so as to find all that hidden stuff. I've used a number of them and it ain't cheap and it can be difficult to find someone who deals with the places or types of records you seek (e.g. German records in Cincinnati).

Such shows are entertaining for those of us who enjoy genealogical research but they don't represent the reality of such research for most people.
 
I grew up in a family where telling family stories was a common way to pass the time. One grandmother was a serious genealogist who wrote a book about the family and had it published. So for me the idea that you don't know your family story is mind boggling.
Same here, family stories were the entertainment at birthdays, family reunions and much more. I grew up among storytellers reciting the past events from long ago. I'm with you 100% to find so many who have no clue of their ancestry. How could you not know at least one thing about your great grandparents? I have several ancestors who fought during the Civil War, on both sides and I can recite stories for each of them. Now, in saying this, I have found some of the stories to be truthful and the majority of them to be false. BUT, the stories led me to clues and hints that revealed the real timeline events and in some cases so much more. My 3rd great grandfather, Calvin Madison Dean, held strict views of the Confederacy and believed in the values of the cause. At age 90, he was still plowing the fields with a horse and plow, stubborn as an ox and unwilling to change his values for anyone. Did I discover this with a "click" of the button? NO And, I bet if Louis Gates was searching for these same facts on Madison Calvin Dean, he would still be clicking away, searching for the answers. Don't get me wrong, I love the show but the answers are not always found by clicking away on the keyboard. Sometimes, you have to create a REAL conversation with a person, step out on the local scene and place your hands on the records and finally, just sit in a chair, be quiet sometimes and listen to your elders tell the stories. Luckily, I was quiet for a long time.
 
Same here, family stories were the entertainment at birthdays, family reunions and much more. I grew up among storytellers reciting the past events from long ago. I'm with you 100% to find so many who have no clue of their ancestry. How could you not know at least one thing about your great grandparents? I have several ancestors who fought during the Civil War, on both sides and I can recite stories for each of them. Now, in saying this, I have found some of the stories to be truthful and the majority of them to be false. BUT, the stories led me to clues and hints that revealed the real timeline events and in some cases so much more. My 3rd great grandfather, Calvin Madison Dean, held strict views of the Confederacy and believed in the values of the cause. At age 90, he was still plowing the fields with a horse and plow, stubborn as an ox and unwilling to change his values for anyone. Did I discover this with a "click" of the button? NO And, I bet if Louis Gates was searching for these same facts on Madison Calvin Dean, he would still be clicking away, searching for the answers. Don't get me wrong, I love the show but the answers are not always found by clicking away on the keyboard. Sometimes, you have to create a REAL conversation with a person, step out on the local scene and place your hands on the records and finally, just sit in a chair, be quiet sometimes and listen to your elders tell the stories. Luckily, I was quiet for a long time.
I agree with you 100% but hasten to add that Louis Gates' show (and others) make it appear that it was easy. I'm sure that there was a great deal of hard work and intensive research behind those quick answers. My point is that many people who see these presentations are mislead and--when they can't come up with masses of information in a short period of time--become discouraged. Perhaps more might be said about the research behind the buttons.
 
I think the Gates show makes everything - easy and difficult - look exciting. Sometimes the big reveal comes from Census records that anyone with a name or two could find in minutes on Ancestry. But they do the whole "turn the page" like it's a big deal. Then the next record really is something that took days of hard work in a dusty archive. All of us who do genealogy as a hobby know how fast it is to pick the low hanging fruit and how painfully slow it is to get those hidden records.

Still, I love the show and think it's a great how they spotlight the complexities of family history and the variety of stories that make up the American experience.
 
I grew up in a family where telling family stories was a common way to pass the time. One grandmother was a serious genealogist who wrote a book about the family and had it published. So for me the idea that you don't know your family story is mind boggling.
Same, when a family has stayed on the same land for almost 200 yrs, it's hard to imagine some not knowing previous generations history.
 
My dad's parents died when he was young. I hit a brick wall nailing down some information about my grandfather for years. I didn't know when he came to the US and his birthdate was recorded on various forms with different dates and years. His birth had never been recorded. I tried to get a copy of his Death Certificate in NYC and it couldn't be found. To top it off he had a common name (same as mine). About a year ago I was going through old scraps of paper yet again and something clicked. I quickly found the ship manifest when he immigrated and his birth record. Turns out his birth was recorded when he was 28 years old. He was in the process of becoming a US citizen after serving in the army and had to have a birth record.

Sometimes things come easy. Sunday night I was with my wife going through old photos at her mom's house. There was a very old photo of her grandfather in some type of naval uniform with a ship name on his cap. Thirty minutes on the internet and we found the ship he served on in the Norwegian Navy and where the photo was taken.
 
Sometimes the answer is in stuff you already have too. That has happened to me a couple of times. A couple of times I went back and re-read information and documents that I already had and some wall busting things jumped out at me. It's not that I hadn't seen them before but the significance didn't register in previous readings.
Absolutely!!!
 
Sometimes the answer is in stuff you already have too. That has happened to me a couple of times. A couple of times I went back and re-read information and documents that I already had and some wall busting things jumped out at me. It's not that I hadn't seen them before but the significance didn't register in previous readings.
Absolutely!!!
The annoying thing about that show--and similar ones--it that they leave you with the impression that it's all so easy. Just push the right button and voila! It doesn't work that way.😰

Once, while sorting yard sale goods at the genealogy library, a man came rushing down the stairs and said to me: "You're the one who knows about Norwegian genealogy, right? Well my grandmother just told me that her father came from Norway--and I want to know all about him!" Name? I don't know--Olsen, I think. Where in Norway? How do I know? When I told him that I'd need some more information, he responded "Well, Louis Gates would have known!"
We used to have a local genealogy group that met at the library...very informal, and occasionally there would only be 1 or 2 of us. Everyone had at least one story about some person driving through who decided they should start their research about grandpa so and so whose name they weren’t sure about but always “heard” lived in the county. 😂

I had both the family with storytellers and the clueless kind. To add to the mix, I was one of the youngest children on either side of the family. So when my dad died and I started really researching, I had to go back and use his stories. Daddy had a stroke and passed away long before I really worked on it...imagine how surprised I was to discover how many things I thought were just “stories” were anything but...🙄
 
imagine how surprised I was to discover how many things I thought were just “stories” were anything but..
It's been my experience that family stories usually have a germ of truth. Research may tell you that events didn't unfold in exactly the same way--years of retelling may have blurred details and a positive spin may have been added but that story itself is significant.
 
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