Be Careful What you Wish For

This is not in any way a Christmas based article.

It is completely centralized on genealogical research.

It is truly amazing that a person can feel like they know their files inside and out, backwards and forwards. There are times when many of us when asked by another researcher if we have information on a certain person/family; we answer without even looking. We are that sure of our possessions.

However, I am going to allow you to see, that perhaps you don't know what you thought you knew.

As many of you may know, I have recently been attempt to make some sense and definitive reason for all my research by accumulating it into a book format for my children and grandchildren.

Not really being aware of the major task I was undertaking I innocently plunged in with the ignorant thought of "How hard can it be?"

After all, "I have all the data that I need, I just need to organize it".

With those thoughts in mind, I followed a simple system to start with. I made a listing of the family surnames that I wished to include in the book and then went from there; writing on each different family line as the mood struck.

I chose one in the beginning that I felt would be an easy start as I felt that my information on that particular lineage was fairly slim and it would be a rather quick section in comparison with some of the others. I did feel that the data I had collected was rather inadequate for even thinking I had enough for a chapter in a book. I remember wishing that I had taken more time with that family and really found more of the intricate details.

Well, I felt that if I was going to write a book, I wanted to include every piece of information on that lineage that I possibly could. So, I began dragging out all of the files, census records, obituaries, death records, CD's and just whatever I had stashed here and there and some few items I had forgotten about having. I began to pick them apart like a good cook does a turkey carcass after Thanksgiving.

Let me tell you something, folks!

I found information I forgot I had. Items that I had stashed a couple of years ago that seemed not to connect, well they connected now. I began to read certain articles and found passages that I had somehow missed the first time I read them. In having found several children or siblings in the meantime, some of the people now connected and made sense.

Of course, I did get sidetracked a couple of times and drifted off into researching a little more on a family line.

The family surname that I felt was "small" enough to begin on and practice with ended up extending to 75 pages. Apparently, I did have a substantial amount on that family surname. However, since that information was in about 9 million different places it was never actually pieced together so I saw what I had. Those 75 pages don't include pictures, obituaries, any documents either.

In doing this book, I have also found certain previously unknown connections with other family lines and have been able to close up certain little loose ends within those families also.

I have also found that some persons with the same surname that I had been told for years was a different family line, were actually one and the same lineage; but from a second or third marriage previously unknown.

If you should decide to write a book, even if it is for your own use strictly-

It is a great way to extend your research and find new information from your old "stash" of useless stuff.

NEVER, EVER

Wish you had more data on a family, I shudder to think what I might have ended up with if I had the "more data I wished for".

And, yes--

It does make me quite intimidated to begin on those family lines that I have concentrated on and know I have just tons of data on.