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Old 08-25-2016, 12:47 AM
 
936 posts, read 809,722 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PhxBarb View Post
I was on a Vermont Historical website today. Looked for census records in one particular town from 1890. It was noted that half of the records had been burned when the basement of the town hall caught fire and the records were destroyed.

So, 13 years later the council members took a vote and decided to burn the other half of the records ! What the heck. May as well make it all unusable. LOL


This reminds me of problem I have encountered:


My grandmother's family was from a tiny, rural town in Missouri about 100 miles southwest of St Louis. In the 1820's, the county hired a brilliant county clerk from St Louis. (This clerk was waaayyyy ahead of his time.) He actually suggested that all births, deaths, and marriages within the county should be recorded in large leather-bound ledger books. --He began collecting this data nearly 70 years before the state required it. Some of these 200-year-old records still exit today.


But here's the problem: Over the past 200 years, some greedy and thoughtless genealogists actually ripped out some of the pages from these leather-bound record books and kept them for their own research. It makes me wonder how much info was lost? But thankfully, there are still thousands of pages of these early records that have survived.
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Old 08-25-2016, 12:59 AM
 
Location: Bay View, Milwaukee
2,567 posts, read 5,281,640 times
Reputation: 3673
Another vent, fresh off of Ancestry.com (and perhaps there's a remedy?):

I just discovered that a 7th great aunt (via my mom's "Weaver line") is also a 6th great-grandmother (via my mom's "Trousdale line"). But now that I've connected the branches, only the 6th great grandmother designation shows up. The same smoothing has occurred with other affected ancestors. It would be useful to have both relationships noted, across all relevant ancestors.
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Old 08-25-2016, 01:55 AM
 
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,809 posts, read 34,433,398 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by TracySam View Post
We have a thread in Psychology where you can post your "1st world problem" of the day, to vent about it, laugh about it, and then move on because it can't be solved.

I want this to be a similar thread for us Genealogy folks.


You know, those little annoyances that most genealogy people will understand, but about which you can't vent to others in your life, because they have no clue. Also recognize that these are by definition "first world problems" so please don't jump in and tell a poster they should not be so upset because there are bigger issues in the world; we know that. Also, please don't try to solve a person's problem unless he/she specifically asks. The purpose of venting is just to get it out and have a few other people say "I hate that too!!!" not to solve anything.


My vent from yesterday would have been:


Agh! That damned 1890 census plagues me again! Once again I am in need of a piece of info that would have been in that census, and probably nowhere else.






My vent for today is:


I have a DNA-cousin match (high confidence) who e-mails me all the time, determined that I figure out how we are related. But his tree is so messed up--He has women in there with their married name instead of maiden name (sometimes even the last name of their second husband) and today he just told me that one of his grandparents was actually unofficially "adopted" and all the generations he has in his tree before that grandparent (back to the early 1700s) are in this adopted family and therefore not related to me (or him) at all. So the months of trying to connect any of those names in that long line to any of my ancestor names were just wasted time. He's like "Oh yeah, Grandpop was unofficially adopted by the XYZ family. Does that matter? But we have to find out how we're related!"


Ugh. I understand choosing to trace the roots of an adopted family (a la "emotional DNA"), but then you should not be so obsessed with DNA matches. And you should put notes in the tree stating that the person was adopted. Even a few months ago, he was sending me lots of info on this adopted line, when they resided in my part of the country, convinced that our connection was in there somewhere. But he FORGOT his Grandpop was adopted????




Anyway, please vent away!
Ahh, the unofficial adoptions. I have one, too. Fortunately, my grandmother dropped a mention of it, in spite of her disapproval of genealogy. One of her grandmothers was unofficially adopted. Nearly 20 years after finding the birth father's name, that's where I'm still at.
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Old 08-25-2016, 02:08 AM
 
Location: Georgia, USA
36,969 posts, read 40,910,095 times
Reputation: 44897
Quote:
Originally Posted by Empidonax View Post
Another vent, fresh off of Ancestry.com (and perhaps there's a remedy?):

I just discovered that a 7th great aunt (via my mom's "Weaver line") is also a 6th great-grandmother (via my mom's "Trousdale line"). But now that I've connected the branches, only the 6th great grandmother designation shows up. The same smoothing has occurred with other affected ancestors. It would be useful to have both relationships noted, across all relevant ancestors.
I'm not sure what you mean here. In any tree you can have the same individual in more than one position. In your case - let's call her Jane Doe - will be in the Weaver branch and the Trousdale branch. All you have to do is add her the same way you would if she were two different people.
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Old 08-25-2016, 09:23 AM
 
Location: Alexandria, VA, USA
1,110 posts, read 887,109 times
Reputation: 2517
Funny story related to pet peeve:

One of my pet peeves is about people claiming to be directly related to so-and-so, when they are only collaterally related. Well, a friend of mine claimed to be directly related to George Mason (of the Bill of Rights fame). When I looked up my friend's ancestry, I found that he was actually a direct descendent of George's father, which would have made his ancestor an uncle of George Mason. I confronted him with this, and gave him a lecture on using the correct information (he likes to write letters to the editor, and sometimes says, "as a direct descendent of George Mason"....). I indicated that sooner or later someone would catch him in this assertion...

Well, my friend insisted that he was directly related, and showed me his line. He was correct, and I was also correct, because there was a first cousin marriage in the tree..
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Old 08-25-2016, 10:03 AM
 
Location: Dallas area, Texas
2,353 posts, read 3,835,537 times
Reputation: 4173
Quote:
Originally Posted by _redbird_ View Post
Way back in the late 1990's geneology was really interesting to me. But if I had a dime for every time a person asks what can they "get" because their gggrandmother was Indian.
Stop! Please, stop!

Or worse, my gggrandmother was a Cherokee princess. Stop! Please! For the love of gawd!!

Got any more of those nitro pills?
A niece emailed me just this week asking which of my great-grandmothers was full native american. I had to answer "None." "Well, grandma, your mother, told me that one of her grandmothers was full blood." "Grandma had dementia."

My pet peeve are all of the family stories, like the Indian blood one above, that get thrown at me. I reply truthfully, but I don't think that they believe me. No, we are not related to the Jesse James. No, that land was not sold with a reverter clause, it was foreclosed on. No, we are not German. No Black Irish. We might be related even though they use two "T's" and we use only one in the surname. She was not born where the courthouse now stands; she was born in a totally different county. She did not die from rabies. The "stories" never stop.
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Old 08-25-2016, 10:04 AM
 
Location: Bay View, Milwaukee
2,567 posts, read 5,281,640 times
Reputation: 3673
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010 View Post
I'm not sure what you mean here. In any tree you can have the same individual in more than one position. In your case - let's call her Jane Doe - will be in the Weaver branch and the Trousdale branch. All you have to do is add her the same way you would if she were two different people.
I considered doing that, and may decide to do so eventually, but for now opted to keep her (and her ancestors) connected to the two sides so I don't have to fill out two forms, etc. (one set on the Weaver side, one set on the Trousdale side) for the same people. But still, in the meantime, it would be nice if the program provided both identities--it seems to default to the identity/relationship considered most direct.
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Old 08-25-2016, 10:56 AM
 
Location: North Carolina
10,194 posts, read 17,735,000 times
Reputation: 13903
Quote:
Originally Posted by Empidonax View Post
Another vent, fresh off of Ancestry.com (and perhaps there's a remedy?):

I just discovered that a 7th great aunt (via my mom's "Weaver line") is also a 6th great-grandmother (via my mom's "Trousdale line"). But now that I've connected the branches, only the 6th great grandmother designation shows up. The same smoothing has occurred with other affected ancestors. It would be useful to have both relationships noted, across all relevant ancestors.
Well, it will show her in both places in the tree view, but the online tree only reports one relationship type in the relationship calculator, usually the closest/most direct path. This never hugely bothered me, because FTM will report all relationship types with the relationship calculator, so I just use FTM for that kind of thing.
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Old 08-25-2016, 11:18 AM
 
Location: near bears but at least no snakes
26,637 posts, read 28,433,148 times
Reputation: 50438
Off the top of my head--

Cousin started this thing thirty years ago, I continued it. I've put the entire tree on Ancestry and have added pictures and taken most lines waaaay back. Lots more than he ever had.

Day before yesterday he emailed me. All excited and asking about a certain ancestor who was famous. So I reminded him that he was INVITED to view the entire tree in Ancestry, but I also c&p the story of this ancestor and sent it to him.

Yesterday he wrote back, still excited. More questions and did I have anything on another person. I then re-issued the INVITATION and also emailed him to tell him to expect an invitation from Ancestry and to check his spam folder because he can view the entire tree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First world problem but the entire TREE is THERE. He says his young grandchildren are getting interested--(wouldn't it be a good idea to print the tree out for them?) Why does he persist in thinking I should c&p data and email it to him?
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Old 08-25-2016, 11:42 AM
 
Location: North Carolina
10,194 posts, read 17,735,000 times
Reputation: 13903
Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland View Post
Off the top of my head--

Cousin started this thing thirty years ago, I continued it. I've put the entire tree on Ancestry and have added pictures and taken most lines waaaay back. Lots more than he ever had.

Day before yesterday he emailed me. All excited and asking about a certain ancestor who was famous. So I reminded him that he was INVITED to view the entire tree in Ancestry, but I also c&p the story of this ancestor and sent it to him.

Yesterday he wrote back, still excited. More questions and did I have anything on another person. I then re-issued the INVITATION and also emailed him to tell him to expect an invitation from Ancestry and to check his spam folder because he can view the entire tree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First world problem but the entire TREE is THERE. He says his young grandchildren are getting interested--(wouldn't it be a good idea to print the tree out for them?) Why does he persist in thinking I should c&p data and email it to him?
Actually, Ancestry.com's invitation system is REALLY unreliable. I have had people send me invites multiple times, to both my username and different email addresses and I never received the invite. And yes, of course I checked spam. Others send me invites with NO problem. The same has happens in reverse sometimes, with me sending people invites. There's nothing you can do about it except have the recipient call Ancestry.com and see what they can do. It's still a frustrating problem but Ancestry.com refuse to fix what is obviously a technical issue with their system, but it is not necessarily your cousin's fault. I would ask him if he's actually received the invites you keep sending or not.
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