Querying databases is great, but there’s one thing about them that sometimes is frustrating–you can’t see all the names in the database. Years ago I used the Germans to America series of immigration books to search for various immigrant ancestors. Today the same material can be searched online at a variety of sites. One of the things I liked about the books was that I could browse all the names in the index. While I realize that one can perform Soundex and wildcard searches, sometimes it was helpful to just look at all the names that started with a certain letter and see if it fit. Sometimes you can’t do that with database queries because they are not set up to allow you to see all the last […]
A relative (we’ll call them “A”) may be reticent about certain aspects of their family history and not at all responsive to gentle or not-so-gentle attempts to ask certain questions. Other relatives may refuse to answer the same questions or indicate that they “know nothing.” After A dies, others in the family may be willing to offer up details. A short time after a relative of mine passed, others in the family willingly shared stories about the family history I had never heard before–ever. It may be worth your time to revisit family members after another family member has passed. Wait a respectful amount of time to do it, but sometimes the informational floodgates open after one member of the family dies.
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