And by the way, your needlework you mentioned is one of the best pieces of family-centered art I have ever seen. I remember you pointing out many of the little things, guns and tools and fruit and things and telling me the little stories that made them part of the tapestry of our family. (How’s that for cliche?) It was obvious to me then that you really do know these people.

Keep doing what you’re doing. You inspire us all.

B

After a lifetime in academia I’m now an archival junkie: since my scholarly expertise is in contemporary theory and culture, I’d never had the need to learn any but the basic research skills. And I’d certainly never had reason to poke around records and stuff! But now I adore plundering databases and (metaphorically) ransacking rare books and manuscript reading rooms. And oddly enough, all my research-driven projects center on Utah and Mormon history (very far afield from my academic areas of expertise).

I like that you read through complete censuses at the beginning, and that it was sometimes helpful. I find a parallel approach helpful with statistics. Now that our data are typically computer files, it can get really easy to just look at the outputs of stats programs and never really look at the data–the scores on variables–themselves. It can be a big pain just like reading through censuses is a big pain, but it can pay off too, I think, in that it can lead you to know your data better than you would if you just looked at descriptive statistics or something. And of course, I don’t typically recommend it either, but when I’ve been forced to do it, I’ve often found it valuable.

Holy.
Cow.

And, yeah, after experiences like that (that you sometimes don’t realize are miracles until later) how can you doubt that there isn’t some sort of involvement from those who have a vested interest in your work?

That’s when it gets humbling.

One great thing about internet genealogy has pretty well disappeared since 1999, though. In those days when so many people were just coming onto the internet, it was a good idea to post all your queries to all the bulletin boards in early December. Then everybody who got computers or AOL subscriptions for Christmas, but who didn’t know what to do besides search for their own names, would often find your queries and answer them.

About then, or maybe a year or two earlier, I did just that. I had been able to figure out how many children John and Nancy Saunders had, their approximate birth dates, and even whether they were boys or girls, but for four children who died before 1850 I had been unable to find their names or exact dates. I posted my query, and a man in New York read it and thought the names sounded like ones recorded in that family Bible he had up stairs … and he went up to the attic and dug out John and Nancy’s family Bible, and scanned and sent me the genealogical pages — probably the only place in the world where those children’s names were recorded. He was not really interested in genealogy, and that week or two was the only window I had to find and contact him — but once again, John must have been pulling strings.

Your rank amateur story of getting hooked on your family history sonds eerily similar to mine. About 10 years ago, I was hooked up to the internet on a dial-up connection one Sunday afternoon to try out the new church Family Search website. Within a few hours I realized that a lot of the information my husband’s parents had given us was wrong, so I started surfing a little to see what I could see. On my first try I found an indexed census that had a scanned image of a census page with all of the family listed that I happened to randomly pick to research. (Later I realized how rare that was in 1999.) Within a few days, I had found websites and message boards that “coincidentally” led me back several generations on that line–to the tune of about 200 people.
Since then, I have found over 600 people on my husband’s side of the family that had never been recorded.

Nothing has EVER come as easily as that first time. I remember thinking I had better type fast before all of it just disappeared.
Lately I have been a slacker about these family lines, but reading your story has made me think that I should get going with it again.

And remember, please, that the point is to help beginners find the courage to begin by showing you some easy tools that you can then use by yourself to work on other lines and other generations. (I’m not volunteering to solve some ancient overseas genealogical puzzle that has stumped generations of professionals!)