{"id":39093,"date":"2026-11-03T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T16:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=39093"},"modified":"2026-11-05T08:03:46","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T14:03:46","slug":"what-they-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/03\/what-they-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What They Taught Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Have you written about how genealogy has impacted you, what it has taught you, and perhaps even how it has changed you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not talking about the few words you learned in a foreign language, how you learned to make research logs, or what you know about the FAN method. Those are helpful things in your genealogy research, but I&#8217;m thinking about more impactful things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I used to joke that what I learned about my ggg-grandfather dying in 1855 was not to load your shotgun while drunk and think it was smart to hit a cow with the butt of said shotgun. Then I got a little more sophisticated and thought about what it meant for his widow and two small girls (both 5 and under) to be in a place where they had no kin to help them out after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I thought about my one grandmother who had strained relationships with several family members and what my relationship with her was like. It&#8217;s personal, so I won&#8217;t go into it here&#8230;but there&#8217;s several things from it I have learned&#8211;things to emulate, things to not, and things to cut her some slack about. I&#8217;ve written about it in things for my descendants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve written other life lessons from my parents, other grandparents, and the great-grandmother I knew. The amount varies for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I extrapolated it to things I&#8217;d learned from the relatives I have researched, but have never met. I&#8217;m a big believer in genealogy being an active pursuit&#8211;not physically active, but one where you think about what you discover and find&#8211;and not just so you can reach conclusions and find more, but so that you can maybe take a lesson or reminder from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But seriously, do not hit a cow with the butt of a loaded gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He may have been drinking at the same time, but that&#8217;s speculation on my part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you written about how genealogy has impacted you, what it has taught you, and perhaps even how it has changed you? I&#8217;m not talking about the few words you learned in a foreign language, how you learned to make research logs, or what you know about the FAN method. Those are helpful things in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39093","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=39093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}