When is good enough good enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know approximately where my Mom lived from birth until her senior year of high school. My grandfather rented a farm probably 5 or so miles from where I grew up. I should have asked Mom to show me where the house was, but for some reason I never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was rural Illinois in the 1940s\/1950s. Rental agreements were not recorded. My grandparents didn\u2019t have any old ones in the papers when they passed. There were no lawsuits regarding the lease (I\u2019ve looked). I know the name of the landowners, so I have a general idea of where the property was at. The house and the house of the owner are likely not standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s possible there is some reference in the weekly newspaper that indicates precisely where they lived. Possible, but not likely. Having read through numerous newspapers in this time and place, it\u2019s probably going to say \u201cwest of town,\u201d \u201croute 4,\u201d or on the \u201cNickel place\u201d (which I already know). The newspapers are not digitized, so I\u2019ll have to read through them manually. Based on when they lived there, that\u2019s nearly 18 years of newspapers. There\u2019s not a street address to get because rural Illinois in this time period did not have street addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Does it really matter that I don\u2019t know precisely where the house was at? Does it really impact what I know about my Mom or her history? It does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not possible to know every detail and sometimes it does not matter. Sometimes approximate is fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When is good enough good enough? I know approximately where my Mom lived from birth until her senior year of high school. My grandfather rented a farm probably 5 or so miles from where I grew up. I should have asked Mom to show me where the house was, but for some reason I never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}