January 17, 2004
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Who am I? And I don’t mean in the philosophical sense. I’ve been working on the geanology of my parents on and off for about 5 years. I always hit a dead end in the same place. It’s like these people magically sprang into being. If I can find a place, or date I would be thrilled. Part of the problem is money, some places charge a fortune to look through records, like ancestry.com or rootsweb. Some records are incomplete like the Tenessee Census records. Another problem is most of the Southern states didn’t keep state birth, marriage and death records until the early 1900′s So unless you know the county and can go there and look in person you are out of luck. I have an Great aunt that is close to 90, in south Arkansas. She knows a lot of names and general time periods. That helps a lot. When you look for someone it helps to be able to narrow it down to a few years and in one place. It’s still time consuming and many times frustrating. and now that I have this all written out it makes me wonder why I chose this time of already frustrating events to pick up on my genealogy again. Maybe my brain needed a distraction? I’m in it now though. And I will most likely keep at it for a few weeks till I just can’t take the disappointment anymore. If I could just get concrete evidence of one of my ancestors that would make it all worth while. It’s one thing to hear all the family legend and lore and it’s another to have that name in front of you on a ships manifest or in a census record. Or in the case of one great grandpa a territorial prison record, Whoot! A serious black sheep! Now if I can just prove it.
Comments (9)
If you were able to trace any of your relatives down to Southern Arkansas, or in the Delta Region, my (Richardson)grandma has a sort of genealogy book that covers all kinds of stuff. (I say sort of because right now I can’t rmbr much about the book. its been a while)
Genealogy is interesting. My (Oliver) grandpa has a book that traces are family back to people that fought in the Revolutionary war. On both sides. On the Richardson side there are LOTS of pioneers and Native Americans. And somewhere in there is getting kicked out of an Australian penal colony.
Good luck with it! I hope you don’t get disappointed again.
My ancestors was workers . But I have never had the taste of the genealogy . This makes me dizzy at seeing all those disappeared generations behind me .
Michel
Love
My dad’s really BIG into this kinda stuff. He’s got boatloads of info going way back. My great, great, great grand-dad came to the US from Ireland… so, I’ve got Irish roots!
BTW, anger/wrath is the fourth deadly sin. I had a short paragraph listing this in my most recent thread, but for some reason, sometimes when I cut and paste, the typing doesn’t show up on my website (??). I mean it’s there while I’m blogging, but when I hit the update key and my site appears, there are sometimes whole chunks of info missing (??!). I’m still trying to figure all this stuff out. Like…. how do you get those nice colored blocks to appear on your site (around our comments?…. hmmmm!).
Hey, Nemimom. Try look up your local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We have the world’s largest geneaology network and resources out the wazoo– and it’s free. Just call up your branch or ward (that’s what LDS church divisions are called) and ask about their family history center. If they don’t have one, they can tell you the nearest LDS branch or ward that does. BTW– Hot Springs has one, if you ever want to come down to my neck of the woods to sort out your herritage. (Oh, and if you do, BRING NEM!) Yeah–I’ve traced my family back 7 generations already– and I’ve only done a LITTLE work in the Family History Center. Anyway– it’s an idea you could try if you’re seriously into geneaology!
Love ya!
Helen
PS– you could also read up on what geneaology services our church has to offer by going to http://www.lds.org Look for links.
My brother’s wife looked into our family’s geneology for their kids and we found out we’re supposedly descended from two U.S. presidents: John & John Quincy Adams. Nifty, eh?
Atleast you have found out something about your ancestory! I know almost nil about mine. I don’t think anybody in my family even knows enough to get started. We never were close-knit on either side of the family. As you mentioned, recordkeeping in the South is the pitts. I know I have Cherokee heritage from my grandmother and grandfather, but that’s it. I hope you are able to trace your history. We all should know from whence we came.
Good luck with that! I’ve tried tracing my family, and it seems it’ll cost me a bit to go back more than a hundred years. It’s hard to get your hands on the information.
My mother has done a bit of tracing of the family tree. I’m just glad someone else has done something…as interesting as it would be, I have no desire to put in the effort!!!