Brick Walls

All of us have them. In genealogy, they are that ancestor that just appears, as if out of no where.

No known mother. No known father. No known siblings.

One day they appear on a record in a state, sometimes with an already made family.

I could tell you all the things I know about one of my brick wall ancestors, but the truth is, unless you're part of my family, directly or indirectly, you won't care about my specific brick wall.

You want to know how to break through your own brick walls. You don't really care what I know or don't know or want to know about my brick wall.

So, let's not talk about the brick walls, those motherless, fatherless, siblingless ancestors of ours.

Let's talk about research and what we know about our families as they migrated across the states. I'll insert here that I don't know enough about immigrant ancestors to know if this holds true for them or not, so lets concentrate on our ancestors that we are pretty sure are not our immigrant ancestors.

It was the exception, not the rule, for an ancestor to migrate alone. If the first record that proves your ancestor was somewhere also shows a wife and children, then the chances are extremely minute that he migrated alone with their family.

Today we like having a backup plan in case something goes wrong. The same was true in 1800. That backup plan usually meant close friends, or close family. A brother. A sister and brother-in-law. Cousins. An uncle. We just don't know until we scour every document.

That is where the catch is. I know some of the brick walls are true brick walls.

For most of us, they aren't true brick walls. Have you gone to the county where your ancestor last lived and seen about a will or any probate records? Have you gone to the surrounding counties and had the same check done? Have you checked the tax records of that county and the surrounding counties?

Did you ancestor live on a county or state line? Have you searched for any and all church records? Have you gone through the Federal Census records? I don't mean an indexed search. Have you actually looked at every page of the census in the township and county where your ancestor lived? Have you searched every page of the surrounding townships or even the whole county?

Indexers get the majority of indexing right, but is your brick wall ancestor one of the few they got wrong? Mine was. Had I not done an actual search of the scanned images of the Federal census I would never have found him. He was indexed wrong. He won't show up on your typical search.

Have you scanned the pages and pages of marriage records in the county where your ancestors lived. Again, not the indexes to those marriage records, but the actual images. You'll find mistakes there, too.

All of this takes time. A lot of time in most cases.

My brick wall ancestor is a brick wall right now only because I haven't gone through every census record, page by page, township by township, county by county in New York state in 1810. It sounds like an overwhelming tasks. It's not an easy taste, but it's one of the things I have to do before those who have been doing a lot longer than I have will finally agree with me that I have a real brick wall ancestor. I put that brick wall up myself.

He's not a true brick wall because there's still so many documents that have to be viewed either the digitalized images, the microfilm, or the actual documents before he can be an honest brick wall.

Sadly, there are many who will claim their ancestor a brick wall ancestor as soon as they stop finding things easily on the internet. Considering only about 10% of the documents are on the internet, you can't call your ancestor a brick wall until those 10% and the other 90% have been viewed. Then if you come up empty, you probably have a true brick wall.

While you're looking for documents on your stubborn ancestor, notice the names that keep coming up again and again. In my case, I can't find out anything about my ancestor before 1820. In 1820 he was in Ohio. Before that he was in New York. I've come up empty in New York doing the quick and easy internet search.

He magically appears in Ohio and just as magically disappears in Ohio. Out of three of his sons whom I identified, I've only found a death record for one of them that I can positively tie to his son. Since my ancestor was pushing 100 years of age in the last census where I found him, it's very reasonable to believe he died in Ohio instead of believing he migrated yet again.

I wish he'd migrated again, then I could compare names from Ohio to his new location. He didn't give me that option. I told you he was stubborn. However, one of his grandson's migrated. With any luck, I'll eventually be able to tie some of those names of people who tended to migrate with him back to Ohio. I'm positive none of the grandson's siblings migrated with him. I can't rule out cousins though. I don't know the maiden surname of his grandmother, nor do I know any of his mother's siblings.

Did your brick wall ancestor or one of their sons sign a sworn statement for a neighbor filing a military pension? Or sign a sworn statement for a widow of someone in the Revolutionary War, or the War of 1812, even the Civil War? If so, do a quick trace of that family. Could they be related to you? Could the husband or the widow be the sibling of your brick wall ancestors wife that you don't know her maiden surname?

Don't forget, pregnancy and childbirth caused the death of a lot of women. There are a lot of half-siblings due to that fact. Many of the men remarried and had more children with the new wife. Men also died, leaving women alone to raise their children. The women often times remarried and had more children with their new husband. Those half-siblings when it was the mother who survived and remarried will have different last names, unless she married her late husband's brother.

This is only a small list of possibilities. I've only scraped the tip of the genealogical iceberg on scenarios and records we might overlook and call an ancestor a brick wall.

I still call my ancestor a brick wall ancestor. Really he's not. He's a stubborn one. But he's far from a brick wall. The only brick wall I've got concerning him, is the one I built because the rest of the digging will not be easy.

Make sure your bricks walls are really brick walls your ancestor set up, not ones you've built yourself.

Why do I do genealogy

As I've stated before, I started doing this only to digitize the records, documents and photographs my mother had acquired when she was doing this many years ago.

I haven't been doing genealogy very long. Less than a year.

Except after doing this for such a short time, I realized while maybe I hadn't been the one tromping through cemeteries, or reading old newspapers, or hunched over microfilm, I'd picked up a lot by watching my mother do those very things. I picked up a lot by watching her search for documents to prove or disprove what she believed or suspected was true.

But that doesn't explain why most of Mom's records still aren't digitized and why there's a growing list of new documents and names with the list she'd left.

In January, when I started this pursuit of "saving" Mom's work, I wanted to learn why she first thought Reuben Birdsell was the father of William Birdsell, my great, great grandfather, and later changed her mind stating that William's father was in fact, Abram/Abraham Birdsell, Reuben's brother.

I had to retrace her steps. Very hard to do when all of her documents were in Kansas City and I was physically in Alaska. So, I searched for documents that she may or may not have found.

When I finally returned to Kansas and drove over to Kansas City to collect her records with my information and her information, it was clear where she'd assumed incorrectly and then in her records was a copy of the document I'd found, too, that proved Reuben was not the husband of William's mother, but Abram was her husband.

It was only one document though. An important document, but I wanted more records that showed beyond a doubt that this was the truth. I searched and found them. I keep searching for more and more and more.

Also, I search for Reuben's life. He's not as easy. Well, he's fairly easy through 1856. After that, I have information on a Reuben Birdsell, but I can't tie this information to my Reuben Birdsell.

That's why I started genealogy. To preserve Mom's information, which lead to tracing her thought process.

Why am I still doing it? Because for each question that I answer, ten more questions appear.

Not only am I learning about my ancestors that were gone before I was born or old enough to have memories of them, I'm constantly learning new things about my ancestors who were a large part of my life before their deaths.

It's the constant learning that keeps me going. Learning about the people, my people. Learning about the history of the various places my people called home. The challenge of learning the history of a location I've never seen, so I'll understand what it was like when my ancestors lived there.

The reward of finding some information, a chunk of proof, that was overlooked, or completely missed that sheds new light on your ancestor.

There are too many ancestors whose story hasn't been told yet for me to stop. That is why I do genealogy. They want their stories told.

I'm thrilled that they chose me to continue the work my mother started.

Online or print?

My whole purpose for starting genealogy was to digitize all those lovely records and information Mom had acquired over the years while she was the family historian. Once I had them digitized I would be done. Her work would be preserved and life would be normal.

Obviously that isn't exactly how it worked out. Not only is a lot of her work still not digitized, a lot more has been added to it. 

Obviously my first choice with all this fabulous information was to find a way to put it online. Yay! No more printing. No more worrying that I'd have to reprint when new information was found. Oh, the ease of sharing the information.

Online is great. I've found a lot of information and digitized images of important documents.

But. There's that word. You need both, digitized copies and printed copies. 

Why? When we pass, and all of us will. We're not going to live forever. We don't know who will pick up our work or when they'll pick it up to carry on with the family history. 

My mother worked on genealogy before the age of computers in every home and long before the age of the internet. I have reams and reams of papers to go through. 

For the most part, those reams and reams of paper have held up from when Mom stopped and I started. There's a twenty-five to thirty year time span between when she finished and I started. 

What if she'd stopped at the age of the 5.25 or 3.5 floppy disk era? How many of us still have a computer with a floppy disc drive? I don't. 

How long before the used to be "forever" CD goes the way of the 8 track? You don't know what an 8 track is? Exactly my point. Or the cassette? The what? Exactly. 

Today, in 2012 I save my information as a GEDCOM. I save my pictures as a JPEG. I save my stories as a Word or PDF. Well the computers of 2050 be able to read any of those extensions? Chances are very likely, no. 

Do you want to do all this work, leave it to your family, a genealogy or historical society and run the risk of them not doing anything with it until the format you used is obsolete and all they have is a lovely coaster to set their iced tea on so they don't water stain their desk? That's not my goal.

Does that mean you shouldn't save it electronically? Don't be dense. Of course you should. That's the world we live in today. We do everything electronically. It's fast. It's cheap. It's the best way to transfer information from point A to point B. Today it's the best way.

Twenty or thirty years from now all of this will probably be improved, making our best way today obsolete in the future. 

But a great backup plan is to have printed copies of everything. Print them on acid free paper and place them in acid free protectors. Distribute copies to various family members so if your house burns, someone else has a copy. Or if your area floods, there's another copy around.

With laser printers, acid free paper, acid free protectors, our printed documents can last for decades if not centuries. It won't matter what type of electronic gadgets a person has in 2050 or in 2150. They will still read the written word that's been printed on paper. 

Use both, online and print. You won't be sorry. And those descendants of yours who find your work in 2150 will be grateful that you thought of them as you preserved the information. 

Is it proof?

You've gathered a lot of information on your ancestors. Does that mean you've proved beyond a reasonable doubt that your statements are the truth?

You're information pertains to genealogy, your family history. We are not in a court of law. There is no such thing as beyond a reasonable doubt in genealogy. That's a term lawyers like to use and juries like to hear. Discard it from your thinking right now, along with preponderance of evidence. If you want to learn more about why these terms aren't used in genealogy you can go here and here.

The term you want to learn and embrace as a genealogist is the Genealogical Proof Standard.

But does it prove that you're a direct descendant of George Washington?

Have you followed the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard)? Do all the dots from one generation to the next connect? Did you find documents showing that his daughter is your great, great, great, great grandmother? You did? Great. You have created a fabulous fiction tree and you did not follow the GPS.

Am I positive about this? Oh yes. And obviously better using Google than you are doing family research. George Washington did not have any children of his own. He helped raise Martha's two children from her first marriage (she was a widow when they married) and later they raised two of her grandchildren.

Whatever supporting documents that you found did not pass the GPS. You went in with a preconceived idea and ignored all the "facts" just so you could support your theory.

Unfortunately, what you prove today, might be disproven tomorrow. How can this be?

You're using what's available to you today. Tomorrow in some city where your ancestors resided, the city council may determine the old abandoned church on the corner of First and Main needs to come down so they can sell that lot to commercial business so they can not only generate commercial property taxes on that lot, but increase their city sales tax revenue by the new business who will build there. If we're lucky, they will go through that church to make sure no records were hidden away. In my example here, they did go through the church and in a cubby in the attic they found three boxes of old records. Marriage records. Baptismal records. Christening records. Records of funerals held in that church that dates back to 1795.

Until we look at those records, we won't know what we'll find. Maybe nothing pertaining to our ancestors. Perhaps you'll learn that the parents you have listed for your great, great, great grandfather are not his parents, but his grandparents, or his uncle and wife. You could find a funeral record for John and Jane Smith with a notation that their young son was taken in by John's brother Thomas and wife.

All you have to do is add the new documentation and sources to your family history with the corrected parents. Make a notation that it was previously believed that Thomas and Mary Smith were the parents, but John and Jane Smith were discovered to have been his parents after the discovery of old documents uncovered in the old Puritan Church located at First and Main in Any Town, New York, USA on 7 Jan. 2012. Or whatever date the records were discovered. Also note who has custody of the records now. There you go. You were wrong, but once you found new documentation you corrected the error and it keeps your credibility in tact.

But based on GPS, your previous and present research were sound. You've lived up to their standards in the past and today.

If you adhere to GPS you can't go wrong. If you don't adhere to GPS, you probably will go wrong, time and time again.

I think all of our ancestors deserve to have their story told reliably and honestly. It's the same belief most genealogist have.

Go find your proof. Don't worry if your proof is disproved as more and more documents are discovered in musty basements and dusty attics.

Standards

Anyone who has even dabbled in genealogy learns very quickly there are public trees who adhere to standards and trees that only copy and paste from others, never documenting or providing sources for their information.

The other day I stumbled across the BCG (Board for Certification of Genealogists). Of course one can become certified as a genealogist. There is even a book available for the standards one needs to follow to become certified. Does this mean you need to be certified? No. Does it mean you don't need the book? Actually, if you're serious about your genealogy, even as a hobbyist, I believe it's a good book to have on your reference shelf.

Why? Because we owe it to our ancestors to make sure we are documenting their lives using the highest standards possible. Pages 29-31 are worth the price of the book. The Genealogist's Code. There are many statements in this section. The last two codes under To protect the profession can never be repeated often enough.

"I will not represent as my own the work of another. This includes works that are copyrighted, in the public domain, or unpublished. This pledge includes reports, letters, lecture materials, audio/visual tapes, compiled records, and authored essays."

"I will not reproduce for public dissemination, in an oral or written fashion, the work of another genealogist, writer, or lecturer, without that person's written consent. In citing another's work I will give proper credit."

While all of this is great and it's how I do things, I can't stop others from stealing my work and attempting to pass it off as their own work. If I see it done, it doesn't make me happy, but I can't force someone else to have my standards.

The very best I can do is make sure I adhere to my standards.

When I first read a summary of the standards, I was surprised that I was already doing things according to the BCG standards. As I thought about it, I realized of course I would do things that way. I come from a science/medical background. I am used to documenting, documenting, documenting. I'm used to seeing "facts" and knowing that all by themselves those facts mean nothing and might not be real.

In my day job I've seen results that aren't true results. They were true for that particular specimen, but a quick glance at the results told me immediately they weren't true results for the patient the specimen came from. How was I so sure? Because the patient was not only alive, but alert. Those results were compatible only with death or right before death. They were not compatible with life. Because of my training and the standards we use in the modern hospital laboratory, I knew better than to trust those result and I knew better than to release them. My job was to determine if the problem was a mechanical problem with the instrument, or if the problem was with the specimen itself. After a quick evaluation, a new specimen was obtained and ran. Those results were compatible with life and the level of illness associated with that patient. Determining the reason for the problem with the first specimen was also researched and documented, also. It was important to document the right results and to document why the first set were wrong.

The same applies to genealogy. You have to show why this document belongs to your ancestor and you have to show why another document with the same name on it does not belong to your ancestor. Some are easier to document than others. John Smith was in New York City on 14 April 1883. You have found a newspaper where he attended the wedding of his sister, Jane Smith, the daughter of James and Jenna Smith. You know the sister belongs to your ancestor named John Smith and so do the parents. You know this because you have copies of photographs of that wedding that has been passed down through the generations.

It doesn't take anyone too bright to realize that the marriage record for John Smith and Abigal Johnson who married on 16 April 1883 in Los Angeles, California is not your ancestor. In 1883 it was impossible to get from New York City to Los Angeles in two days.

Yet there will be many who do place John Smith in New York on the 14th of April who also attach the marriage record of the wedding that took place two days later in Los Angeles to your John Smith. John Smith did marry Abigal. But he married Abigal Jenson, not Johnson and they married in Dutchess County, New York, in 1885, not in Los Angeles, California in 1883.

For the most part, most of the standards just mean you need to use common sense. Can you find a document for the life event? Yes? Great. Does it make sense that it belongs to your ancestor and not someone with the same name? Yes? Fabulous. Can you find additional documents, such as tax records, deeds, etc., for your ancestor in that area? No? Are you sure it's your ancestor? No? Then you can't use it at this time. You can save it and see if you can find more evidence that proves this document belongs to your ancestor or disproves it, but you can't state it as fact yet.

That's where so many get into trouble and I've done it myself. We're so happy to find this that we don't stop to evaluate it with everything else we know about our ancestor. We state it as fact when it hasn't been proven yet.

This is where knowing the standards will go a long ways to prevent all of us from barking up the wrong family tree.

But the most important thing to remember about the standards, if I can't read your report and retrace your steps showing how you came to that conclusion, you have not come close to adhering to the standards set up for genealogists.

You can get a copy of the Standards Manual here or here.

But none of my ancestors came from there!

Ancestry.com is offering DNA testing. Actually, they've offered several versions over the last few years. One was the Y chromosome test, meaning only men could have it done and it only followed all the paternal lines of your families. I can see where that could be very helpful, or harmful. Let's say two brothers did the Y chromosome test and learn they don't have the same father. Oops. That will show up pretty quickly and it will make family reunions a little touchy for a bit.

There was also the mtDNA test. This is for your mitochondria. Yes, you have some, too. We all do. It's pretty amazing. We inherit it from our mothers. Who inherited it from their mother. And so on back to Eve. Sons have mitochondria, too, but it came from their mother. They do not pass their mitochondria on to their children. This is the one thing that we women get to claim as something we get from our mothers. It's a great way to do a very specific DNA test on your maternal line. However, it doesn't tell you that great, great, great, great, great, great grandma really was your mother. It's more general. This is where this line of mitochondria originated and where it migrated to.

Currently the DNA test of flavor is the autosomal DNA test. A lot of people have gotten their results back and they are stunned. Shocked. The big shocker is how many have over 50% Scandinavian in them. They've traced their ancestors to England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and maybe one line from Denmark or none of their lines are from a Scandinavian country. There must be a mistake. My ancestors did NOT come from there.

Honestly, in genealogy we're really lucky if we get five hundred to a thousand years back with documentation supporting our claims. In genealogy we also assume that the child belongs to the husband and wife who are married to each other. In real life we know there are fathers raising children who don't have a drop of their DNA in them. We're assuming our ancestors were faithful to each other. Yes, we really do get to live a rose tinted glass world when doing genealogy.

Once we bring in DNA testing we learn so much more. We learn some of our genetic makeup. We can only hope it coincides with the information found on all those birth records. Some will. Some won't. That's real life.

What people are learning with this new DNA testing is not where our ancestors came from, but where the ancestors of our ancestors came from. Why are there so many with such a high rate of Scandinavian in them?

World history is a wonderful thing. First a fair share of the Scandinavian population immigrated to other areas of what we call Europe and the UK in search of a better life. Pretty much like our ancestors. Second, we don't have all those stories of the Vikings because they stayed home and told tales. They went out and invaded lands. Especially the lands with a coast line. After invading an area, it's reasonable to assume they didn't leave a lot of the local population. More than likely those they left were used for breeding purposes and it wasn't the males they kept around.

These DNA tests go back thousands of years. The world population today is very different than it was when Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn and didn't find a short cut to India. It was even different a thousand years ago. As it was different two thousand years ago. If we're looking at something that goes back genetically ten or more thousands of years ago, naturally we'll be surprised.

Even what we consider an aboriginal population to an area came from migratory ancestors. Ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden man and woman has been migrating. Some migrated so many thousands of years ago that they are now considered aboriginal to that area.

None of these DNA tests are going to prove to you that you are a direct descendant of Cleopatra.

Perhaps none of the ancestors that you've found came from a Scandinavian country. But when it's all said and done, I'll bet the ancestors of your ancestors did come from there.

Just as my mother and father neither one were ever in New York state, if we had a DNA test that went back 300-400 years it would show that a high percentage of their ancestors came from there.

Instead of saying the results are wrong, why not do a little research and learn when that ethnic group migrated to the area of the world where your ancestors came from. When did the Vikings go to what we call the UK today? Google is our friend. Let's use it and see what the hints from the DNA tests can tell us about the ancestors of our ancestors.

Happy Father's Day

And sometimes that skeleton isn't on your branch

Last night I read a census that I thought belonged to my multi great grandfather. I was upset because a man with the same name in the location where I thought my multi great was living at the time owned 24 slaves. 

For my thoughts on legal versus moral read yesterdays blog.

Today after learning more about that side of the family, I realized it was not him. My direct ancestor was not in that state in 1820. 

I'm hoping that the other information that I learned about my grandfather means he never owned a slave in his life. He was a Methodist minister for over 30 years. I so hope that as I learn more about him that his moral compass prevented him from feeling that he had the right to own another human being. 

Does the slave owner in 1820 belong in my tree? Probably. But at least he isn't on my direct branch. 

Maybe it shouldn't make me as happy as it does, but it does make me happy that it wasn't my direct ancestor.

The day a skeleton fell from the family tree

Every genealogist knows it can happen. They know it will probably happen.

We don't always know what the skeleton will be. What is a skeleton to me, might not upset another person and vice versa.

When we think of the family skeletons we think we'll find an event that at the very least wasn't acceptable during the time that our ancestor lived. Did great, great, great Aunt Mary really have a baby before she had a husband? Or maybe their was a bank robber in the family. Oh no, we're related to Jesse James.

In my case, today I found something that made me physically ill. Sadly, this ancestor did nothing illegal for the time and place he lived.

In 1820, my 4X great grandfather had a son and a wife and twenty-four slaves. As I stared at the ages of the slaves and the number of slaves my stomach churned. I was sick. Physically sick to my stomach. Twenty-four slaves for three people. Appalling.

Please don't give me a history lesson that there were slaves of all colors and nationalities. I know that. I have no idea what the breakdown of races and nationalities were in my ancestors stable of slaves since the Federal government didn't think it was important enough to differentiate one class or race of owned people from the others. Maybe I'll hit a brick wall with my Irish side because this ancestor owned their parents a few generations back before their descendants married.

Yet he did nothing illegal. He was well within the laws of the times.

A few people have tried to comfort me with those exact words. It was the way things were back then. It was legal.

Yes, it was legal. It was the way things were done back then.

Just as beating your wife was legal if she displeased you by burning the biscuits. Or if she got her soap too lye heavy. Or whatever reason her husband wanted to come up with just so he could beat her.

There were many men served burned biscuits and washed in lye heavy soap who didn't beat their wives. Legally they could, but morally and ethically they chose not to. They viewed her as their equal in rights of the home. They couldn't give her property since a woman couldn't own property. But they treated her as an equal.

Today there are a lot of things that are legal, but it doesn't make it morally or ethically right if you partake of the legal activity. Brothels are legal in several counties in Nevada. Legally any man who has the money can walk into one and enjoy the company of a prostitute. Ethically and morally his wife won't care that he hadn't broken any laws.

This is how I view my ancestor who didn't break any laws of his time. Morally and ethically he was wrong. Even in 1820 there was plenty of debate across the states about the wrongness of owning another human being.

The fact that he found nothing immoral or unethical about "owning" twenty-four human beings disturbes me.

One small bit of satisfaction in all this. This man's granddaughter went on to marry the son of my great, great, great grandmother who was very active in the underground railroad. Grandma Rachel is the kind of ancestor that makes me proud when I find her. Shame on you, Granddad Richard. You've embarrassed your descendants.

It just goes to show, we never know what we'll find that we wish we hadn't found. It's not always an ancestor doing something illegal.

Who?

Who was Gordie Harding?

I don't have any idea.

On Memorial Day I was at Athens Cemetery, Jewell County, Kansas to take pictures of headstones. I wanted to take the pictures around Memorial Day so there would be flowers on the graves.

The day was very warm, so I didn't get every headstone photographed.

Why do I do such silly things? I upload the photographs of the headstones to FindAGrave. Not all burials are recorded on FindAGrave, but there are millions there.

The headstone provides information to the family searching for their ancestor. While gravestones are not 100% accurate since they're created during times of grief, they can include information that is very hard to dispute.

The dates might be off by a few days. Maybe the engraver heard wrong. Maybe the engraver couldn't read the writing on the paper that contained the information. So, yes, some of the gravestones contain the best guess of the one doing the engraving.

Still there are some things that are engraved on gravestones that are very hard to argue about. When it lists the names of the children, that's hard to argue. Maybe the name isn't spelled exactly right, but to date the ones I've seen were close enough that you can't argue that this child belonged to these parents. When it states wife of or husband of, again, that's very hard to argue that it's wrong.

What does any of this have to do with Gordie S. Harding? All we know about Gordie is he was born about 1886 and died sometime in 1949.  There didn't appear to be any of Gordie's family buried in the same cemetery. Who was Gordie? Where did Gordie come from? All are questions that I can't answer. Gordie is a complete unknown to me.

From the way it appeared on Memorial Day, Gordie was all alone without any family around.

For some reason that really bothered me.

Before I left home I'd grabbed some flowers, suspecting there would be graves without flowers. I placed some flowers in front of Gordie's headstone and took the picture.

Whoever Gordie S Harding was, they deserved a picture of their gravestone with flowers. May Gordie rest in peace and may his family know exactly where his final resting place is located.

That's one of the purposes of FindAGrave, to make it easier for families to locate the final resting place of family members and it's a place that allows them to set up a memorial for their family member.

If you have a friend or family member who was cremated you can still add them to FindAGrave. Please do so. You do have to join to add people, but FindAGrave is completely free to use and join.

It's one more way to make sure our ancestors are not forgotten.

Also, if I have created a memorial for one of your family members and if you want to maintain the site, please use the edit button there and I'll be more than happy to transfer them to you. After all, you know more about them than I do.

One question: Why?

Occasionally I'll message people on Ancestry.com who are working on some of the same people that I'm working on. Sometimes it's to let them know that I think their research is fabulous and it makes it very easy for another genealogist to come behind them and see how they reached their conclusion. 

Sometimes it's because they're direct descendants of a great, great's sibling and one can see they have a lot of great information on their line. That's a perfect time to share your line with them and they share their line with you. It's a great chance to reconnect with a line of your family. 

And there are times when I message someone because their tree is a cut and paste of all the trees out there and include a lot of wrong information. Those are touchy messages. What I try to do is touch on a couple areas where their information and mine differ. In one case it was something simple, such as a wrong year for a marriage. Since I have a copy of the marriage license, I'm very confident in my research. Especially since it's one of my direct ancestors and it came from a local courthouse. 

The other possible error was in reference to whom our g, g, g grandmother married. Again, I have a marriage record of whom she married. This time it was one that came from FamilySearch.org that's a scanned image of the real deal. Plus I have a certified copy of the same record that I found in my mother's information. 

Imagine my frustration when I received a response back that basically said, "Yeah, I just copied the information knowing there's a lot of wrong information out there and I don't bother to verify anything." Those weren't the exact words, but that's a condensed summary of it. 

My one question to such people is very simply, why? Why do you bother to pretend to be a genealogist if you aren't going to verify anything?

I understand putting information in your tree that you haven't verified. I do it myself. However, I do attempt to put a note on the information that it hasn't been verified. I'll admit I don't always make the note. Which is one of the main reasons why I have my tree set to private. Until every "fact" has been verified, my tree will remain private. I don't want to spread the fiction tree syndrom. 

I know there are mistakes in my tree. I had one cousin from one of those direct descendant of one of my great, great's inform of a few errors. I really appreciated that information. He knows that line. I'm learning whose who in that line. While I haven't made the changes, I will go through that line again, verifying everything and making corrections. 

Once again, if you're going to post a public tree, why not make sure it's accurate, or at the very least, make notes on the parts that you haven't proven yet? Why spread the misinformation?

It takes time and energy to produce even a false tree. Why not spend that time and energy producing an accurate tree? 

Do you know what you're missing by doing a cut and paste tree? You're missing the thrill of discovery. You're missing the thrill of proving who your ancestor really was. You're missing the thrill of having a hunch and then stumbling on a long lost relative who actually has a letter proving your hunch was right. 

I refuse to join the cut and paste crowd. Is there any chance I can convert any of them into becoming a real genealogist? That's why I attempt to make contact with them. Hoping they'll get the thrill of learning new provable information. 

Sadly, I feel like it's a losing battle. I hope I'm proven wrong on that hunch.