Being a professional genie and all, I'd like to extend the criteria for the "Things I've Learned" list to include clients' ancestors as well!
1. I had a hard time letting go of Cotton Kimball as the father of Elizabeth Kimball wife of Nicholas Colby of Haverhill. Cotton has some great people in his line, especially fearless Hannah Duston, of scalping fame. But this year I replaced him with John and Mary (Kimball) Kimball, so now I have twice as many Kimballs as I thought.
2. I've learned how to say no when asked to help with volunteer activities. I already do too much and though I want to help all of the societies to which I belong, there just ain't enough of me to go around! To remedy this dilemma I just switch around from society to society. This is good for networking, also.
3. When working as a consulting genealogist at Ancestors Roadshows, etc., I've learned that most people don't have questions they want to ask me. Almost everyone simply wants to tell me what they've done and who their ancestors were. A little validation of their research techniques goes a long way!
4. Tom Jones (Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL) taught me that just because you write as you go along doesn't mean you're not going to have to write the whole danged thing over again because of something you discover towards the end of your journey. One little piece of evidence can make you have to reorganize the presentation of your data, and if you don't do it, you're not able to prove your point effectively. Thank you, Tom!
5. I keep thinking of a trip we took to England when I was 6 months pregnant and my eldest child was 18 months old. The flight was delayed, he got completely hyped from being overtired and cried (screamed) his way across the Atlantic Ocean. We were mortified at the horrible experience we were providing for our dagger-eyed fellow passengers. We were seated in the middle of the 5-seat row and the hostesses totally ignored us, even when he threw up while we were landing. This took all of 18 hours from start to finish, I had my husband and good friend to help, and still I think of the trauma! Recently, I was researching a lady from the Azores who came over with her 2-year old and a 9-month old in 1907 by ship. Who knows if she may have been pregnant? I keep thinking of her now and being awfully glad we were able to fly to England rather than take a ship! What a whiner I am!
6. I've learned that it is much better to just hand over a not-quite ready gedcom file to a friend than to make her wait another ten years because I've almost discovered something else. This is humbling.
7. It makes me feel centered and calm to study the past. Researching ancestors and reading about the history of countless localities has an effect on you after a while. You see patterns in behavior, in the ways that people react to certain situations and it makes you feel like the past is not so distant. You feel like you can predict the outcome of so many events based on whether or not people are paying attention to the past.
6. I've learned that it is much better to just hand over a not-quite ready gedcom file to a friend than to make her wait another ten years because I've almost discovered something else. This is humbling.
7. It makes me feel centered and calm to study the past. Researching ancestors and reading about the history of countless localities has an effect on you after a while. You see patterns in behavior, in the ways that people react to certain situations and it makes you feel like the past is not so distant. You feel like you can predict the outcome of so many events based on whether or not people are paying attention to the past.
8. Plenty of people know very, very little about their ancestors, even as close as their own grandparents. Most people cannot name their eight great-grandparents. While not beneficial to those people, it is good for the professional genealogist because it brings more clients our way, but more important, gives us the gift of telling people about their own families and seeing their happiness as a result. I love this!
9. Having a family reunion is a great way to get the entire extended family interested in genealogy. It brings out photos (Essie, I haven't forgotten your album!), introduces people with different political beliefs, or from different parts of the country to the concept that they have much in common with each other, starting with 99 percent of their ancestors, and makes for great deviled egg consumption!
10. Twentieth century research is tough! The completely new dimension of dealing with live people is introduced and suddenly we have to be conscious of people's feelings and sensitivities! This is scary, but worthwhile in that we get to bring families together!
9. Having a family reunion is a great way to get the entire extended family interested in genealogy. It brings out photos (Essie, I haven't forgotten your album!), introduces people with different political beliefs, or from different parts of the country to the concept that they have much in common with each other, starting with 99 percent of their ancestors, and makes for great deviled egg consumption!
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| My nephew John Kemmett, cousin, Esther (page) Klaiber and brother Tim FitzGerald Barnes Family Reunion 2010 |
Blogger awards are a great way to get to know my fellow bloggers because they usually have a requirement that you pass along the admiration, so below you will find my top ten favorite blogs. The challenge lies in winnowing down my list to just ten. I just can't believe how many great writers there are out there! And how fascinating the variation in people's approaches to genealogy. Some of them encourage me by their own dogged research, others keep me up to date on technological issues, a few make me want to call them and enjoy a loooooong cup of coffee together discussing life and ancestors, and the rest are just plain entertaining! I hope you enjoy them all as much as I do! I hereby pass the "Ancestors Approved" award to the following geneabloggers (in no particular order)!
1. Heather Rojo's Nutfield Genealogy
2. Bill West's West in New England
3. Marian Pierre-Louis's Marian's Root & Rambles
4. Anne Morddel's The French Genealogy Blog
5. Paula Stuart-Warren's Paula's Genealogical Eclectica
6. Mel Wolfgang's Mnemosyne's Magic
7. Stefania [unknown]'s L'origine della famiglia Basaba
8. Miriam Robbins' AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors
9. Susan Petersen's Long Lost Relatives
10. Caitlin GD Hopkins' Vast Public Indifference
