There are certain laments common in genealogical research, burned courthouses, lost bible records, unmarked cemeteries, brick walls, multiple marriages, unsourced data, computer failures, etc., etc.
Amongst the main genealogical laments, this ancestor:
(pick one or more from the following list)
- hid from the census taker.
- named Mary Smith married John Williams.
- never married and yet raised children with no parentage clues.
- was illiterate and knew only illiterate census takers.
- died young, poor, without an estate, leaving no records, but definitely issue.
- never lived in one place long enough to set down roots or create records.
- wouldn’t or couldn’t spell her name the same way twice.
- changed her age by more than a decade throughout a lifetime of census records
- lies in an unmarked grave, marked only by a depression.
- used her first name in childhood and her middle name as an adult.
- was one of too many people with the same name in the same place.
- married so many times, no one kept track of her last name(s) much less her final surname.
- was the second of three wives named Mary.
- only knew clerks with horrible pen and ink blot issues.
- lived in a county where the courthouse burned or flooded or both.
- lived on the state or county line with multiple jurisdictions for vital records.
- lived in a state trying to balance the budget with cost of their vital record copies.
- lived in a state that doesn’t define vital records as open records or has a prohibitive waiting period of 100 years.
- lived before vital records were created and required.
- had a bible inscribed with vital records but no one knows where it is.
Which of those is the most perplexing?…
