Geneology for beginners
I've been dabbling a bit in geneology, mostly just because I was going to a family reunion where a 100 year old great aunt would be and it felt like I'd better not wait to ask her about her parents. Truth be told, this all came about because I got high one night a few months ago (this is a rare occurance for me) and I started having conversations with my great-grandparents and thanking them for their contribution (or cursing them for their contribution) to my personality. I got stuck when I realized I knew NOT ONE SINGLE THING about two of my great-grandmothers other than they had died before my parents knew them. It really offended me that these women lived and died and I knew NOTHING about them. Not if they were introverts or extroverts, not if they were sunny or crabby, not if they were mean or kind. I set out to find out.
And I did. So now I want to record these stories and upload these pictures so they'll be where my own children and grandchildren (etc) might find them when they turn 50 and realize they wish they'd asked.
So what site do you think will be around in 50 years? I've considered ancestry.com and geneology.com but I think I'm going to go to familysearch.org because it's backed by Mormons. I'm thinking like Hari Seldon here, what sort of thing is needed to make it last through time? How about an entire RELIGION backing it? Sounds like sticking power to me. (Throw in Mormon preparedness and you have SUPER sticking power.)
Now I'm stuck with another small issue. No one has the names that show up on formal records. All my great uncles were named after relatives and called by their middle names, for example. So "Charles W." shows up on a cemetary marker as "C. William" and everyone refers to him as "Uncle Bill". And the last names of the women are SO confusing! Poor children sent into service meant they may take the name of the household where they served as a servant, for example.
Speaking of fostering, a second cousin told me that her mother worked in the Depression and there was no daycare, so she was sent to live with a family 10 miles away that took in children for money. She called it "fostered out" and said her parents often came to get her Saturday morning and sent her back Sunday night. For THREE years, ages 3 to 5. She hated it. The man of the house drank and the woman who took in kids had a bunch of her own and she was scared of her husband and my cousin wondered if her parents knew how awful it was and is scared they did. I was really stunned by that story, but listening to the stories about going out in service it's pretty clear that childcare was a huge issue for poor women. My grandmother served her teenaged years in an older sister's household. I just didn't realize it was so common.
But anyway, the names are a bitch to get into a computer program. I'm going to need one that allows us to say the name they were called as well as the official one. We're not royalty here.
And I did. So now I want to record these stories and upload these pictures so they'll be where my own children and grandchildren (etc) might find them when they turn 50 and realize they wish they'd asked.
So what site do you think will be around in 50 years? I've considered ancestry.com and geneology.com but I think I'm going to go to familysearch.org because it's backed by Mormons. I'm thinking like Hari Seldon here, what sort of thing is needed to make it last through time? How about an entire RELIGION backing it? Sounds like sticking power to me. (Throw in Mormon preparedness and you have SUPER sticking power.)
Now I'm stuck with another small issue. No one has the names that show up on formal records. All my great uncles were named after relatives and called by their middle names, for example. So "Charles W." shows up on a cemetary marker as "C. William" and everyone refers to him as "Uncle Bill". And the last names of the women are SO confusing! Poor children sent into service meant they may take the name of the household where they served as a servant, for example.
Speaking of fostering, a second cousin told me that her mother worked in the Depression and there was no daycare, so she was sent to live with a family 10 miles away that took in children for money. She called it "fostered out" and said her parents often came to get her Saturday morning and sent her back Sunday night. For THREE years, ages 3 to 5. She hated it. The man of the house drank and the woman who took in kids had a bunch of her own and she was scared of her husband and my cousin wondered if her parents knew how awful it was and is scared they did. I was really stunned by that story, but listening to the stories about going out in service it's pretty clear that childcare was a huge issue for poor women. My grandmother served her teenaged years in an older sister's household. I just didn't realize it was so common.
But anyway, the names are a bitch to get into a computer program. I'm going to need one that allows us to say the name they were called as well as the official one. We're not royalty here.