Amateur Genealogy

Grrr....

Let me just get it out right now.

Grrr....

I try not to be a snob about anything, but let me tell you, all bets are off when it comes to doing genealogy. I feel like I have earned the right to be a snob about it.  I couldn't even begin to count the hundreds of hours I have spent working on genealogy, and yet I know that I still have so much to learn.  Most of everything I know is self-taught.  However, making sure that I check and cross-reference all information comes from my mother--she has always been a stickler for it (much to my frustration in the beginning).  However, from that way of thinking, I've gotten pretty darn good at what I do.

Today, I got an email from a woman who honestly, doesn't know how to write.  She didn't capitalize or punctuate any of her email.  Right there, she's off on the wrong foot with me.  Because of the poor writing, I couldn't honestly tell if she was connected to the Kennedys or a member of my family.  It took a few minutes of searching to even find the people of whom she was talking (if I even understood her email correctly).  She admitted to being "new" to genealogy.

She had been looking through Family Search, and low and behold, one of my beloved Frank ancestors (from Dauphin county) popped up.  I'm not sure how this happened, but I hadn't reserved the right to perform the temple work myself, and she was wondering if she could do it for the husband, the wife and their daughter.

Just to put this in perspective, I have been working on the Frank family for over three years now.  I have spent entire days in the Perry County Historical Society, thumbing through every book, and looking at every microfilm record, just to find a mention of one of them.  I've never found another person who has researched them so thoroughly, so I'm a bit protective of them.

As most of you know, I don't share the opportunity to do the temple work of my family members with very many people.  With all the work I do to find my ancestors, and to find their stories, I feel intimately connected with them when I take their names to the temple.  However, trying to push my genealogy snobiness back, I told her that she could absolutely take those names to the temple (meanwhile, I was double-checking that I had reserved everything else).

Anyway, I hadn't previously had the name of the wife or daughter.  With more family information, it's always easier to find a specific person, so I looked them up (as an aside, she had NO surname for the wife, and listed "Pennsylvania" as the birthplace, two cardinal errors in my book).  Turns out the the birthdate didn't match my ancestor, and the husband was living next to a family of the same name that is probably the husband's parents.  Well guess what?  They aren't the same parents of my Henry Frank (and I KNOW that mine are correct).

Another email to her, asking if perhaps her ancestor wasn't the same one as mine?

This is where two of my worlds clash.  Yes, I'm supposed to be Christian and loving and sharing, right?  Right.  Genealogy, if done correctly, however, is a world, based on facts and records.  There's no pussyfooting around when it comes to genealogy--it's either right or wrong, and if you're wrong, I'm going to tell you.

Aaaahhhh.  I feel much better now, although I can't WAIT to see the reply email (I know, I know, it's just not nice).