Take It With a Genealogy Grain of Salt

Following is a repeat of an older blog post I wrote that think is important to revisit because we all need to remember this as we search for our ancestors.

 

I've been sorting through old papers for the past two days. Tucked away in a folder in a filing cabinet in the basement was a magazine dated 1988. It's a  Financial magazine, all about making money, investing wisely and so on. This particular issue featured stories of people who had invested wisely and retired early, or were successfully juggling a career with pursuing a dream.

I was puzzled as to why I'd saved it but figured there had to be an article featuring someone I knew. Sure enough there was. The article was a glowing report of a man, we'll call him Sam. Let me preface this with the fact that I knew, and still know, Sam very well.

The article revealed that Sam had a  high-paying career and was also a rather successful emerging artist (I use the word artist to describe actors, writers, poets, painters, sculptors). Sam worked part-time to support his art and his yearly wages which were given in the article were extremely good.

The article portrayed Sam as a very successful person pursuing his dream while earning a more than decent living. A descendant finding this article 50 or 100 or more years from now would be thrilled to think their ancestor was such an amazing person!

But the author of the article only knew Sam for a brief moment in Sam's life. I've known him for a very long time and also know what has happened to Sam over the past 24 years since the article was written. 

The truth is that Sam has made bad choices in his life. The details are personal so I will simply say that his path in life was a downhill one, not the successful one portrayed in the magazine. He is not a successful artist. He no longer has a high-paying career.

He's a very different person from the person portrayed in the magazine article. Reading it made me realize that as genealogists we should not rely on one article or one obituary to paint the full picture of an ancestor's life. These are all subjective views written at a specific moment in time. Take it with a grain of salt. Or at least recognize that it's only one small piece of a person's entire life.

Legacy Family Tree Article Why Do We Do Genealogy?

Olive Tree Genealogy's latest article on Legacy Family Tree is proving very popular. If you haven't read it, you might want to take a few minutes to do so.

A friend asked an interesting question. "Why do you do genealogy?" The answer should be simple. One would think it would be something along the lines of:

"I do genealogy because I want to know who my ancestors were."

But guess what? Like most questions in life, the answer is not that simple. There are a myriad of reasons why we delve into genealogy research. Wanting to find out who our ancestors were is just the tip of the genealogy iceberg.

Continue reading at  Why Do We Do Genealogy?

Which Ancestor Would You Like to Walk Back Into Your Life?

Joseph McGinnis' brother Hugh McGinnis

This morning one of my Facebook friends, Midge Frazel of Granite in My Blood blog, was talking about a book and one of her comments was:  "Think about which ancestor [edited] that you would like to walk back into your life."

What an interesting thought! Which ancestor would I like to walk back into my life....

I was torn between three ancestors - Ots-Toch, my Mohawk ancestor born ca 1634 in New York, Joseph McGinnis my Irish great-great grandfather, and my 4th great-grandpa Jacob Peer whose origins and whereabouts before 1786 in New Jersey are a mystery.  

One thought that came to me was - would I even like my ancestor when I met him or her? I suspect Ots-Toch would be a little rough around the edges for me, and she might not want to talk or share her stories. It's kind of odd to really think about your ancestors because I suspect we all naively expect that they'd be refined and gracious and lovely people and we'd adore them. But I think the reality is that it's just as likely they could be uncouth, unpleasant and perhaps not up to our standards of personal cleanliness! 

Ignoring those extraneous thoughts, I'm going to ask Joseph McGinnis to come pay me a visit. Because my father inspired me to start searching, because he wanted to know about his Irish ancestry so badly, and because he died when I was just barely 14 years old, I am choosing Joseph. Joseph was my dad's great grandfather and I dont' know much more about him than I did 30 years ago. 

I don't have a photo of Joseph but the photo on this post is of his brother Hugh. All I know of Joseph is that he was born in Co. Down Ireland, probably near Belfast and that he married Frances (Fanny) Downey ca 1845 and had a daughter Bridget (aka Delia) born 1846 in Co. Down. Shortly after Bridget's birth he brought his family to Ontario Canada and settled in Puslinch Township near Guelph Ontario. I do not know for sure who his parents were. So Joseph please do drop by for a chat. I'll even offer you a drop of good Irish whiskey!  

I want to hear about the place where you grew up, about your voyage from Ireland during the Famine years to the wilds of Canada and how you coped once you were here. I hope you have a few hours to spend because I want to listen to your Irish lilt and hear you talk about Ireland.  

RootsTech Official Bloggers Get Critiqued

The Genealogy Nit-Picker (aka The Ginger Jewish Genealogist) has written an article on her blog called RootsTech 2013 – The Nitpicker’s Critique, Part 2.

In it Banai critiques the Official Bloggers and calls for changes both in the method of choosing  the Official Bloggers and in the duties each blogger might be expected to fulfill. As you will see from the comments, her post evoked some ire from a few of the Official Bloggers.

Now, first let me state that I was an Official Blogger (and have been for every Conference every year) but I could not attend this year due to health issues. So I did what I could virtually to carry out what I consider my obligations at having the title "Official Blogger". Although I was unsure of any added value, I tweeted during the live streaming sessions. Why do I say I was unsure of any added value? Because almost anyone who wanted to, could watch the live-stream on their own and didn't need to read tweets about it. My hope was that by tweeting, perhaps I would catch the attention of those who weren't aware the session was live. 

Banai mentions me but is not as critical as she is for many of the other bloggers. And yes, she is critical. But is that necessarily a bad thing? She makes some good points - for example she points out that the search features on many of the blogs do not work well. Some blogs apparently do not use topics (keywords) so finding specific posts is next to impossible. That's a valid concern and I agree that those who are chosen to be Official Bloggers need to make it easy for readers to find their posts about RootsTech. In fact all bloggers should be using keywords, labels and topics to make it easier for their readers to find what they want.

One thing Banai mentioned was that most of the Official Bloggers did not make it to many sessions. That implies that they were just sitting around goofing off when nothing could be further from the truth. The first year I attended I (like everyone else) was run off my feet preparing to interview various individuals.

That prep included scheduling a mutual time with  the individual, booking time slots in the interview rooms, doing research on the individual or company then writing up interview questions, conducting the interview then taking the tape of that interview and writing up what I hoped was a good blog post. That is a very time-consuming and labourious endeavour. I had planned to attend several sessions daily but that did not happen. I was too busy with interviews and visiting the vendors to see what was new in the world of genealogy and other official blogger duties. So I ended up only getting to four sessions total.

Banai also expressed her concern over the same bloggers being invited each year. But as she herself points out, FamilySearch (the organizers of RootsTech) have a criteria for choosing genealogy bloggers - and that criteria is based on traffic. Those blogs that are the most popular and have the most traffic are chosen. It's pretty simple and it's the usual way of doing things. 

So while I understand her frustration at not being chosen, I would approach this a different way if it were me. Anyone can attend the Conference and blog and tweet about it. They don't have to be an Official Blogger. So what I would do is attend the next Conference and blog about the sessions and the vendors like crazy. I'd arrange my own interviews with different companies and vendors. In short I'd do the most comprehensive blogging about RootsTech I could possibly do.  And I'd use social media to tweet, post on Google+ and Facebook and pin on Pinterest etc.  

And then I'd write to FamilySearch organizers with links to my amazing and numerous blog posts, as well as stats showing how my traffic rose from x to y visitors/readers during the Conference. And of course I'd end with the suggestion that I'd make a pretty darn good candidate for Official Blogger at the next Conference. 

So Banai while I think you wrote a courageous and well researched article with some good points (maybe it will shake us Official Bloggers up a bit and we'll step back and do our own assessment of the jobs we did at the Conference) I challenge you in a friendly, not confrontational way, to do it better. You have some valid points so let's see you put them in action yourself.  I would love to see you there as an Official Blogger!  But you're obviously going to have to make that happen by doing things better than you think most of the Official Bloggers did.

And perhaps we Official Bloggers need to step back and say "Can I claim this day? Did I do a good job? Am I proud of what I accomplished and did I fulfill what I believe are my obligations to RootsTech and my readers?" If the answer is "yes" then be happy and don't worry about any criticism. If that answer is "well, I guess I could have done such and such a little better..." then make a note to change things next year. Then do it. 

So thanks Banai for a thought-provoking article. It might be critical but it does make us think.