Techincal Difficulties

Sorry about the blog being down a few days but we seem to be having a few difficulties. As you have seen our wonderful background has changed. I logged in one day and it was just gone. I tried to upload it again but nothing seemed to be happening. So I had to find a new one that I'm not sure exactly how I feel about but we will try it for a few days and see how it works out. It might also change if I can't get the layout to my liking. Because as you can also see a few things have disappeared from our side list. I'm not happy about it but that is just the way that it goes sometimes.

Anyway, be patient and I will have us back up and running smoothly in no time. At least I hope ;).

Where In The World Is Henry?

I have a relative that I really want to find information on. He is my great, great grandfather. I can find him in 1910 but for some reason he seems to have disappeared from every other census. What is that about?

I've mentioned the show "Who Do You Think You Are" before and as I was watching the show with Matthew Broderick he had a similar problem. He had a relative that was in the 1850 census and then his wife was in the 1870 census but neither was in the 1860 census. Where did they go? They found out the relative was in the Civil War during the 1860 census. Still why wouldn't the rest of the family be on that census?

I joked with my father that maybe someone came by the house to record the family but since the father wasn't there they just kept on going. I like to hope that isn't what happened. Maybe they were out visiting or it was Sunday and they were at church. Either way you would think that they would send someone back later to make sure everyone was counted.

Think about it this way. Every time I watch any television show these days I see at least five to six commercials about how important it is to send in the census. How is it so important now but back then you could just skip whole families? Does that mean that not everyone will be counted this time either?

All I know is that when you come across some one like ol' Henry here it makes you want to throw your notebook across the room and stomp away vowing never to search for anyoen again. It's a lie and we al know it as soon as we say it. Why? Because secretly we love the Henry's. They challenges that they repersent and when we finally find that information there is a vindication that comes with it. A sense of beeting the odds and learning something more. And it's that why we all started researching in the first place?

On The Road Again

Everyone always says that to really call yourself a genealogist then you have to do the leg work. My father has done his trips and coming soon I will finally get to do one of my own.

Okay not just on my own but I will be going to another town and spending at least a day in a state archive building looking up as much information as I can. My father, cousin and I are heading into the south to get our hands dirty and the soles of our feet worn by doing what researchers do; research.

I am really excited. Who wouldn't be? I get to finally do the leg work. I feel like Indiana Jones or Alex Haley. Will I find the information that I want? What will the town look like? How many pictures will I take? What will I come back with? So many questions and soon I will have answers. Did I mention that I'm excited?

I will be keeping everyone posted on what I find and what I seek and whatever answers I find I'm sure that it will take me a few steps closer to my goal.

Some Help Please

I meant to post this yesterday but I had a few birthdays and that took me away from the computer and my research and I guess I could have done it last night but I was way to tired to try to write anything. However the point of this post insist about my lack of time but about the new show on NBC called "Who Do You Think You Are".

It is a great show and showcases the search for ancestors. If you haven't seen it then here is a little recap. Every week a different celebrity searches for either their father or their mother's side of the family. They always find different things than they might have expected and they always travel around the country to find the answers.

My question after watching the episode with Emmitt Smith is where are all these people that help them? With every person they almost seem to have a genealogy "dream team" that knows which book to pull or has the papers already ready for them when they show up. Like with Lisa Kudrow. She went to Belarus in Europe wanting to find information about her great grandmother. When she got there she was taken to this state archives where she found the information that she wanted but then the next day the lady that was helping her had like a full transcript of the Holocaust in that part of the country and how it related to Lisa. Or with Matthew Broderick who found out that one of his relatives served and was killed in the Civil War. He met up with a man that took him to the spot where he was buried and together they figured out that Matthews relative was the last unknown soldier from that company. It's like who are these people?

I sit at my computer and I look through the records and what do I find? Half of what I am looking for. I know that everyone will tell you that you have to go to the city or state or archives in order to find everything but really; will I find my own "dream team" when I get there?

True it stands to reason that someone working in a historical library or state archive will know more than the average Joe fresh off the street, but if I walked in and said, "I was looking for Jerry Spralls who was born in 1926 in North Dakota" would even they be able to find him in the blink of an eye? And yes I know that what looks like a few minutes on television could actually be hours but I have been looking for one relative for three weeks and still haven't even found a birth date for him. This is why I wonder.

I think the show promotes some really great tools for looking into your genealogy. Like ancestry.com (who is one of their sponsors) and state libraries, genealogy societies and people that probably make their living doing this and only have like four customers a quarter. Still I also think that they make it look a little easy. With Sarah Jessica Parker they were all the way back to the 1700 by the end of the show. I am stuck in 1870. Help Dream Team?

The bottom line is that if you get a chance to watch it then I strongly suggest that you do but simply remember that unless you can probably afford those wonderful individuals they are promoting your search will likely take longer than an hour or even two.