This weekend I finally finished reviewing a genealogy that a distant cousin wrote, and sent it back to my uncle. It was a frustrating experience!! There was so much that could have been really interesting and very good, but it all fell apart due to lousy methodology.
The basic fault was that there was no attempt to publish or attribute the sources of the various stories, photos, and scanned documents. Further the "compiler" had basically cut and pasted all these various items together without any real attempt at generating a rigorous family history. There were photos in there that I would have loved to get copies of, but there was no indication of where the photos came from or who owned them. Likewise for some of the narratives that were directly cut and pasted from other people's writings.
My cousin totally got my immediate family all wrong. The only thing he had right was our address which I'm sure he got off the internet white pages.
Many people have great photos, news clippings, and stories about their family. And a lot of them recorded them and published them as "genealogies" after the TV series "Roots" became popular. The trouble is, if you don't document your facts, the genealogy doesn't really stand up as an authentic piece of history. There are a lot of erroneous, or even mostly fictitous "genealogies" out there, and they are a constant source of headaches for serious family historians. It takes serious time and effort to sort out "bad" information from the "good" info. I pretty much ignore any genealogical information if it isn't tied in some way to a public document or publication.
Even the stories or legends can be documented by recording who told them to you and when, and recording them as such. Later you might find something that links the story to actual documented history and then it becomes even more important. Often times family legend will assert a tie to some well-know historical personage, and you don't know if it's true until you uncover some documentation. My wife's family had a story about some ancestral connection to Daniel Boone. Well my father-in-law eventually uncovered some documentation that proved out the old story, and made the whole thing even more interesting.
My mother told me stories about her family's Cherokee heritage. As a kid I took it with a huge grain of salt, because my mother and her family didn't look very "native American" at all!! Later I found that my Grandparent's were listed on the Dawes enrollment census for the Cherokee nation. Further research revealed that the surname was from a Scotch-Irish fur trader who married into the Cherokee nation. Although the actual amount of "Cherokee" DNA in our blood is minuscule, it's fun to realize that my ancestors were part of the actual history of one of the more famous tribal nations in North America.
Unfortunately the "Cherokee Princess" myth is such a part of so many people's family legends, I usually don't mention my heritage because it has become a running joke among serious genealogists. If there were as many "Cherokee Princesses" (which is total nonsense, there was no "royalty") as people claimed, they wouldn't have been forced from their land and moved to Oklahoma.
Reviewing this genealogy did do one thing positive for me. It gave me some motivation to get back into working on my genealogy. I spent some time Sunday scanning some rare photos I had. I figure that now the kids are teenagers I probably have some time to gradually get back into it. When they were smaller I decided to put genealogy on hold because it was causing me to neglect my family (ironically enough) on occasion.
Hopefully my interactions with my "genealogist" cousin will be few and far between!!
It's funny that you mention some false leads on family research...
I've been having similar thoughts lately because I cannot seem to find much (if anything) to confirm handwritten records of my family history before my dad. Hhhhmmmmmm!?
It sorta sucks being on the left coast and all the family history/research data is available in the Midwest. Sometime next year (after Shannon's and Dave's wedding), I'm just going to have to find the time for some traveling.
If I don't have a chance to say it before, have a very Merry Christmas!
Craig
If you didn't know about Shannon, here is the wedding website - http://www.weddingchannel.com/wedding_websites/PersonalWebsite.action?view=home&occ=566572645
Posted by: Craig | December 12, 2005 at 07:47 AM
Craig -- if you know where your family lived and at about what years, the census records are a great place to find some documentation on the family. Also, depending on the state, there are often a number of records you can request. Death certificates you can usually get from the county. Also, you can request certain documents from the Social Security Administration. Let me know if you would like some help. The Mormons also have an excellent Family History library in Mission Valley.
Gerry.
Posted by: Gerry | December 12, 2005 at 07:43 PM