bennison@clt.DEC (Victor Bennison - DTN 381-2156) (12/06/85)
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Some notes on recent postings:
To Denise O'Jibway:
"Three Rivers" is almost certainly Trois Rivieres in Quebec Province
on the St. Lawrence River. And by the way, if you ever get into the
Canadian research in earnest (have you already?) I would appreciate
a report on what useful tools are available, e.g., census indices,
surname indices, etc. I have Canadian research to do also, but don't
know much about what's available. I don't have the time to just
search unindexed census records, unless I know exactly where my people
were. I'm particularly interested in Ontario. I know a lot about
what's available in New Brunswick. P.S. just out of curiosity, what
is the origin of the name O'Jibway?
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One common mistake made by novices to family research is to look for
other people with the same surname. Even if you have one of the most
uncommon surnames, the probability of the person 1) being closely
related and 2) knowing anything about his ancestry are slim to none.
You are just as likely to be closely related to the person in the
office next to you, whatever his/her name is. Most surnames had their
origins long long ago and there are zillions of branchs coming down to
the present. It doesn't mean there are zillions of people with that
name, but that any two people with the same name are likely to be on
different branchs. The process of researching your family can be
broken down into two major sub-tasks:
1). Ask for information from everyone you KNOW you are
related to. a) ask them once. b) ask them again.
2). Roll up your sleaves and get down to the HARD work
of searching records and piecing your way back, step
by step.
Attempts to take short-cuts seldom pay off. If there is a short-cut
that pays off sometimes, it is in searching published family histories.
But even this route seldom pays off unless you have already gotten
back well into the 1800's using 1) and 2) above.
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Vick Bennison
...decvax!decwrl!rhea!tools!bennison
(603) 881-2156jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly) (12/10/85)
In article <1631@decwrl.UUCP> bennison@clt.DEC (Victor Bennison - DTN 381-2156) writes: >One common mistake made by novices to family research is to look for >other people with the same surname. Even if you have one of the most >uncommon surnames, the probability of the person 1) being closely >related and 2) knowing anything about his ancestry are slim to none. Although I agree with most of what Victor Bennison says, I'm compelled to offer a specific counterexample: I did the shotgun number to all Gilloglys I could find in phone directories across the country (about 25, I think), and got 8-10 responses. Of those, two pointed me to members of their family who were actively doing genealogy. More than half of the respondents were obviously related to me (based on stuff I had back to about 1820), including one of the genealogists, and within 10 years the other genealogist and I had figured out where we connected. (It was one more generation back.) Of course if you have a name like Johnson it isn't going to work well, but for us obscure types (I suspect Denise O'jibway is in this category) it can be helpful. -- Jim Gillogly {decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim jim@rand-unix.arpa