Tree Trauma

 

How many times when you find a family tree online which contains your mystery ancestor do you race to see where that researcher found the secret stash of tell-all documents—only to discover a very obvious case of mistaken identity? That's likely happened to all of us, for I can't count the number of times I've spotted comments about the disappointment of realizing such mistakes.

No sense in lapsing into tree trauma over this unfortunate situation, though. Anyone who knows how to research our own family history can certainly put those same skills to work in evaluating the quality of another researcher's work.

That's the kind of viewpoint I carry with me into the pages of century-old genealogy books, and it can work just as well when evaluating the work of fellow subscribers to today's online services like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage, too. Any genealogy service which allows us to pull up documents equips us with the tools we need to make such evaluations for ourselves.

Finding verification in documents may be key, but once we find the document to inspect, actually looking at the document, rather than relying solely on the transcription, can go so much farther in helping confirm or reject another researcher's family history assertions. No document showing in the tree you're viewing? Run the specific point in the tree through a search process for yourself—even on another person's tree, you can do that at Ancestry, sometimes with eye-opening revelations on trees which had no previous verification.

There are, of course, the inevitable situations which seem to slip through the research cracks. A birth and death which happened in between two census years, for instance, can make it seem like nothing serious happened in the family at all that decade, simply because we didn't know to look elsewhere for any signs of tragedy.

Sometimes, a part of a family's history might be known only to those who lived through that particular family's circumstances at the time. Yesterday, reader—and blogger, too—Miss Merry commented on how her grandfather was raised by his grandmother after his parents both died young, and yet the census enumerators recorded their relationship wrong, thus becoming the likely source of misinformation in other  trees online connected to her grandfather's family. She commented, "I know the true story as a direct descendant." But would a distant cousin have realized the problem?

Though we sometimes complain about scrambled information on some family trees posted online, I've realized what Miss Merry mentioned provides us with some guidance. Yes, people can get information wrong on their own family tree—but it is usually concerning more distant relationships. If I'm in doubt concerning a tree at, say, Ancestry.com, I'll click on the view that lets me see the pedigree leading to the "home" person. If the relative in question is a fairly close family member, I'm more likely to trust a subscriber's assertion on that tree than, say, a claim about a fifth or sixth cousin.

Even better yet, some online subscribers are not only adding documentation to their tree from records accessible through services such as Ancestry.com, but adding documents from their own family's personal collections. I've seen photos of entries from old family Bibles, or inscriptions from backs of old family photographs. In one instance I ran across this past week in working on my Carter DNA matches, one man explained the source of confusion in his line. Posting a copy of his father's obituary, he explained that after his dad divorced his mom, he married another woman by the same name. Of course, those who didn't know those details might have thought that the second woman was the son's mother, but she wasn't. By his sharing the document plus his comment—and because he was so closely involved in that aspect of his family's history—it helped guide other researchers away from mistaken assumptions.

Face it, whether we are using century-old genealogy books as our guide, or trying to make sense of our family history from trees posted online in this current decade, we're going to find mistakes. Always go into this research process with eyes wide open.  Anyone can make mistakes, even governmental record-keepers. Avoid tree trauma: do your own follow-up by seeking out documentation to confirm and double check any assertions made by other researchers, no matter who they are or where they shared their family tree.

Yearning for the Interactive

 

Last night, our family did something different. We waited until the sun dipped behind the tree line and the day's heat wave abated enough for us to gather, face to face outdoors, with some friends. That was something we hadn't done in such a long time, it felt almost awkward. There were no volume controls to adjust when the person at the far end of the circle mumbled into her mask, and no record buttons to press to capture that funny story for replay later. We just did something that, decades ago, used to come naturally to friends: we hung out.

We need to get back to doing that again, more often.

Perhaps it is the lingering Zoom fatigue which dimmed my enthusiasm for this past week's breaking news that RootsTech will once again be offered, free for all, virtually, come next March third through fifth. Or perhaps I'm jaded by the over-abundance of online learning opportunities. After all, I've still got over a dozen sessions from last year's RootsTech event yet to view in my queue—to say nothing of the multiple learning resources afforded us by other genealogy sites. As much as I love learning, I can't seem to find the motivation to log in and give a listen.

On the other hand, I would love to develop a way to conduct sessions online in which everyone could have some input—not a talking head being watched by a gallery of other attentive heads, but a collaborative experience with the give and take of many people sharing what they know and what they've found. A hands-on workshop. An interactive experience—as in learning as a two way street. The give and take of a live genealogy event, the kind we used to enjoy before our world got turned upside down, even if it is packaged up in a teleconferencing format.

We just really need people. To connect. Even if we're stuck in a digital domain. Surely, someone is creative enough to come up with an alternative.

The Gift of Connection

 

As the pandemic slowly inches its way through a second year, medical heroics notwithstanding, I've been thinking a lot about the gift of connecting. 

Connection—something we haven't been able to do, fully, for a very long time—is a need woven into the human psyche. For those of us who've sat through any psychology classes, or business leadership sessions, or almost any interpersonal training, we know the drill: thanks to Abraham Maslow, we can all recite, together, the "Hierarchy of Needs" he championed.

Lest you have forgotten, let me remind you that right in the middle of those five ranges of human motivation is the category of "belongingness"—the yearning to connect with others. Our ability to connect becomes our gift to enable each other to draw closer toward personal fulfillment.

It is not by sheer coincidence that I've been thinking much about connectedness. Yesterday, I spent an entire day watching—from a three thousand mile distance—what, if not for the pandemic, would have been an energy-filled conference of the National Genealogical Society. It was admittedly still an event full of valuable information—but it was a day spent apart from all the people I would have loved to connect with, relate to, and share the energy with. Truth be told, the prospect of facing another online conference—even another upcoming one I've enjoyed the most and would never have missed in the past—withers upon the thought of enduring it virtually. The need to connect is superseding the need to be informed.

There are, of course, ways we can maintain our connection with our groups of friends, associates, or even nearby genealogical society members. Just the ability to connect via video conferencing methods has made the past fourteen months bearable. But we need to move beyond satisfaction with what has become the online meeting status quo. Peopling a meeting with silent, sitting figures, present only to absorb information, is not really the same as hosting an event which gives the gift of connection, of birthing a sense of belonging.

Belonging and participating become a two-way proposition. Belonging is connecting, meeting each other halfway, and thriving on our shared commonality. It is difficult to participate without a sense of belonging. Yet it is unlikely we truly feel as if we belong, if we don't have the opportunity to participate.

In my life-beyond-genealogy, I pay attention to the musings of those who study leadership. One pithy blog I follow, the creation of Peter Shepherd of Human Periscope, is called Noodle Scratchers—noodle, as in that round object perched above your shoulders, meant for thinking.

Recently, Peter asked, "How can I make this [meeting] about connection not content?" After I lead a genealogy society's Special Interest Group meeting, or deliver an hour's lecture on a research challenge, I find myself asking that same question. Why does lecturing via Zoom seem like delivering a drink from the fire hose? Perhaps the restrictive property of the vessel delivering the goods results in an unmanageable flow. The medium may not necessarily be the message, but it certainly can direct us on how to massage that message so our audience may better receive it.

Such considerations as those, however, still leave us in the one-way camp of content, not connection. And yet, that same medium—that online meeting forum—has the ability to accommodate multiple directions. Innovative applications can allow us to achieve that very connection we yearn to reach.

With Zoom fatigue becoming a real threat to the vitality of continued online options for organizations, I'd say now is the time to call for redirection toward connection. That very technology which once snatched us from organizational oblivion can certainly convert into the perfect launching pad for the next generation of meeting ideas to take flight. The generous gesture will be to develop that technology into a tool which doesn't merely permit us to individually deliver or receive content, but enables us to connect with one another.

The Only Constant is Change

 

For those of you who like your family tree "just so"—and kept that way—don't look now, but there's another change afoot at Ancestry.com. 

I'll have to admit: most of the changes coming our way from the various genealogical giants on the for-profit side of the equation have been, at the very least, benign. Many are outright helpful. Not so, this latest addition to the Ancestry.com toolbox.

I happen to prefer viewing a document and deciding for myself whether the person featured is indeed my ancestor—not just taking someone else's word for it. When building my tree on Ancestry, I always look at the document in question before clicking to make it part of my "footnote" column on an ancestor's profile.

It used to be such a simple process. View hint. Click through to view document. Examine evidence. Choose yes. Or no. And move on to the next hint.

Now? It takes a tango with a jungle of transcribed information sliding into view from yet another page before I can get to that small, hyperlinked "View Record Page" key to access the stuff I wanted to see in the first place. Tedious.

I'm sure someone means well. It's quite obvious with another recent addition—the "tour" of the 1940 census—that Ancestry takes their calling as educators to heart. They want their product to be usable, and with so many newcomers taking delight in discovering their roots, the company surely understands their responsibility to enable customers to benefit from their product.

But it would be helpful for customers to have a way to decide whether an upgraded option is helpful—or simply more clutter standing in the way of attaining our research goals. After all, so many ancestors, so little time.

Why call for yet another step to coax me into doing what I already do without fail, anyhow? If I could find the switch to turn that option to "off" and dispatch this new feature to the ignored hints bin, I'd gladly do so.

Perhaps for some, options like this are necessary training wheels. I appreciate the "app" feeling shaping the research behavior of new subscribers. But when we're ready to start pedaling on our own, it's nice to not have to lug around those extra wheels as baggage.

Saturation Point

 

In past years, now would be the time when folks like me would get ready for upcoming genealogical conferences. Early bird deadlines loomed for big draws like the National Genealogical Society's conference in May, only to be followed by the conference offered by the former Federation of Genealogical Societies, and a choice of many state events, as well.

The pandemic has changed all that. But rather than shriveling a thriving conference season, we've actually seen attendance opportunities explode. Following last year's hard decision points when, hoping right up to the last minute for the situation to improve, organizations had to pivot and switch to online programming, we now have become used to the webinar option, even for venues as large as RootsTech.

There's a fallout to that abundance. When registrants can sign up for a conference and then revel in the opportunities of choosing to view everything available, we approach a change of meeting dynamics.

For one thing, being greedy, I've signed up to watch far more sessions than I turned out actually watching. Something tugs at me when I end up essentially walking away from presentations I theoretically paid to watch. Yes, I know it's the conference that was the package deal, not the sessions I chose but ended up not watching. I just can't handle missing out. The weird reverse psychology turns out to be the thought: why sign up if I'm not going to follow through? I really need to be present to benefit. I won't participate as fully, watching from home. This past year, I've learned that about myself.

On the other hand, there is such a proliferation of genealogical material available online now that the thought might be, why offer anything more? The "market" is saturated. How can an organization like a local genealogical society compete with the program development muscle of international businesses, plus national conferences and multiple state programs, as well? Besides, there are only twenty four hours in any given day; there is only so much training a budding genealogist can absorb every day. The willing learner is saturated with too many opportunities.

With a dynamic like that, I wonder whether there will be a shakeout in the genealogical world. I'm not sure it will be experienced quite the same on the business side as it will in the small, nonprofit side of the equation. While yes, a local genealogical society can also produce monthly meetings online, with such a wide spectrum of programming choices, it is most certain that some entities will be shaken loose. 

And yet, that is not the primary platform upon which local societies were originally founded. We may all—large or small—be currently existing on the same bandwidth, but eventually life will return to something closer to normal, or at least face-to-face. Then what? Will that future still include local organizations dedicated to the support of our community's genealogists? Or will they have fallen by the wayside in the metric of spiraling demands on each organization to continue producing bigger and better online programming?

Of course, the local genealogical society never signed up to be part of this race. The current reality of the pandemic restricts ability to gather together for in-person meetings, thrusting us into the same online arena in which larger organizations already have the muscle to excel. The key, however, is not to attempt to compete on that same playing field—a field rapidly approaching that saturation point of programming—but to look for the inflection point at which we, though not the larger entities, can specialize in meeting local needs. That is, after all, the trajectory we were originally intended to pursue in the genealogical community.  

The Maddening Draw of a Universal Family Tree

 

I have to admit it: I cannot resist checking out those fun relationship apps built especially for genealogy conference attendees. I'm always looking for connections. And, face it, family history enthusiasts want to know about family connections.

The downside: those apps have to rely on data to drive their calculations. And that data usually comes from a universal family tree—the tree of everybody, crowdsourced by fallible people like you and me.

Naturally, since RootsTech Connect registration offered the chance to tap into this year's "Relatives at RootsTech" program, I opted in. I couldn't resist. Knowing full well about their genealogical Achilles' heel, I still wanted to see what the program could produce. 

In short: I was disappointed. Not only did I fail to produce even one fellow conference attendee closer than an awkward second cousin twice removed, but the two registrants I did find at that level were "verified" by a pedigree which did not line up to what I had documented. In fact, in one case, the age discrepancy between generations bordered on biologically impossible.

While I know there are compelling reasons for collectively maintaining a universal tree, whenever I have taken a close look at my corner of that universe, I have been disappointed. Yes, collectively, people keep watch over unsubstantiated assertions, but on a case by case basis, it seems my branches lack the kind of support needed to keep my genealogical neighborhood clean. Yes, of course I could take on the task myself, but that misses the point of collectively mounting that challenge.

This weakness is not just a symptom of universal trees, of course. A quick spin through the individually-posted collections on any genealogical database website will provide an eyeful for those willing to take a look. And that is my concern this weekend, on the jumping-off spot from one month's research goals to the next. 

Beginning with tomorrow's post, I've set aside the month to rectify my lack of progress on researching one particular third great-grandmother, Delaney Townsend Charles. While I can't locate documentation on the particulars of her life—other than a cameo appearance as "Lania" in the 1850 census—apparently there are several others who can glibly spout off many details of the generations preceding her.

Without, I might add, one single slip of supporting documentation.

How do people make such genealogical assertions? If I don't have any historical token of an event's occurrence, I feel compelled to leave that data point blank—thus my situation of not being able to push back even one generation. Forget that—I can only infer an approximate date of death for both Delaney and her husband, Andrew Charles. But the temptation to make research headway cannot overcome the caution needed to ensure accurate recording of the facts.

Relying on others' research can become a crutch to us especially when we limit our data exploration to only those same resources on which we build our online trees. Whether from a site hosting a universal tree or from one hosting individual trees, digitized documentation can only move our research progress as far forward as the hosting service can produce for our use.

There comes a time—for some, sooner than for others—when we need to learn to look elsewhere for the records we seek to verify our ancestors' specific existence. My March research goal will be one which insists on this brave step out into the documentational unknown.   

   

What a Strange (Quarantine) Season This has Been

Today may be an American holiday—happy Fourth of July!—but with vestiges of the pandemic quarantine still holding life hostage, it hardly seems like a time to freely celebrate. Our family will likely resort to our top secret vista tonight, far from the maddening crowds, to view the illegal but inevitable fireworks displays—keeping a prudent six feet of social distance, mind you—and call it good for holiday celebrating.

Meanwhile, all sorts of other events are swirling around the unsuspecting observer of life. I cannot begin to count the number of times I've received unsolicited texts from spammers, attempting to grab my attention with descriptions better suited for unattached men on the prowl than happily married women. Thankfully, our phone service provider found a way to effectively nip the erupting epidemic of phone spamming in its cancerous bud early on this spring, yielding us one form of peace. But don't think that reprieve extended to email spam or phishing expeditions.

One particular maddening email just arrived in the official in-box of our genealogical society's treasurer, supposedly from the organization's president (that would be me), requiring information by return email so that a bill could be immediately paid. Thankfully, rather than comply, what our treasurer did immediately was call me to confirm that I had sent the email. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that, even though my name was on the email—spelled correctly, too, an unusual flourish!—the address it was sent from was a contrived gmail account, something almost anyone could set up for free and without any oversight or questioning.

That kind of incident was not an isolated example. It just so happened that a similar attempt was directed to the board of a nonprofit organization where my husband serves. I'm sure many other small groups have been targets of such attempts, as well.

What is frustrating to realize is that many nonprofit organizations are not the large, well-funded concerns we usually have in mind—thinking of places like the Red Cross or Salvation Army, for instance—but local, and tiny, volunteer groups whose hardworking heart is focused on helping make life better for others. Every penny for such groups is hard won, and volunteer help is stretched so thin that one rushed misstep could mean irrevocably losing an entire treasury.

Even more than that, not every genealogical society has been able to step up to face the social distancing demands of the current situation, and have suspended their meetings—even, in some cases, their board meetings. Without the customary frequent contact among board members, such cases might result in wrong assumptions acted upon, due to lack of communication.

Such situations are likely what perpetrators of these phishing scams are banking on. I just hope the hardworking volunteer board members of fellow genealogical societies don't fall prey to such strategies. We may be small, those of us in local genealogical societies, but we need to keep each other informed when we spot threats like this.