There’s no question that some of the genealogical information available on the Internet is either incorrect or unreliable. But whether it’s a problem for individual researchers depends entirely on how they use it, whether they use it at all, and how they make that decision.
It remains, however, a problem for the genealogical community because the bad data continues to proliferate.
This is the story of a 140-year-old letter and its writer. The letter is puzzling not because of its contents, but because of its intriguing history and the many questions it raises. Why was it never mailed? Why was it torn up and by whom? Why was it pasted back together again and saved? And how did it find its way from Brooklyn, New York, to Spokane, Washington, 125 years after it was written?
As you already know, keeping track of direct ancestors or descendants from just one pair of ancestors can be a challenge. But how do you track multiple ancestral pairs and all their brothers and sisters as well as their children and grandchildren? Because it can be complicated to do just that, it is easy to avoid looking at those collateral lines and to focus mostly on direct lines.
In 1940, some three and a half million resident aliens (immigrants who were never naturalized) were living in the United States. Among them were my grandparents. In 1903, my grandmother Angela Ciaravino Silinonte immigrated to the United States from Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily; my grandfather Giuseppe Silinonte followed her across the ocean in 1904.
This is only one of the many comments that Marge Rice receives on a regular basis. Marge is a pioneer in the growing contingent of genealogists who have created a hobby of returning heirlooms to their families of origin. To date, she has returned a remarkable 506 photos to 369 people.
Who Are the Rescuers?
In 1880, my great-great-grandmother Anna Louisa Anderson, her husband Anders, and their two children immigrated to the United States from Sweden. Anders was a shoemaker who earned two dollars a week. Anna bore fourteen children, four of whom died in infancy. When she was seventy, Anna fell and broke her hip, which left her bedridden for the last five years of her life.
Will the use of photo manipulation tools provide false images to future generations who might assume these images were not changed? What are the ethics of modifying family photographs when used as pictorial evidence in our genealogy research?
Some time ago, I received a colorized photo from an online acquaintance.
Church records of our ancestors are so valuable they should be sought to document every vital event in our ancestors’ lives. Besides providing valuable data about our ancestors, they can also be invaluable in providing relevant information about an ancestor’s family and community.
As a child, I spent hours playing in the jewelry boxes of my grandmother and great-aunt. I handled and admired each treasured piece as I created gaudy combinations in front of the mirror. When I became a teenager, my love of jewelry remained, but my enthusiasm for the old-fashioned baubles in the boxes faded for more new-fangled fare.
In the past, census records have provided genealogists with a great deal of useful information—names of family members and their ages, immigration and naturalization dates and places, occupation, and financial worth. Public access to such records, however, is granted only after seventy-two years have elapsed. For this reason, we both eagerly awaited the release of the 1930 census.