Hello again, sorry for not posting last week and being a day late this week. Last week was some much needed recovery and then this week I just lost track of time. This week’s topic is based on work on my spouse’s tree. My spouse was adopted, and the state laws, he has absolutely no idea who his biological family is, however, he did 23&me with me, and found some relatives.
One of them gave him some information from the side of his family he thought might be the one he’s from, and in I went, First, I set up a new tree – since we don’t know where to connect them on mine, this seemed a good bet. Then I made the bloody thing private, since its mostly for me to work on puzzling it out.
So, I’m filling in information, start following the hints, and no one is from this area, though that doesn’t mean -that- much. Then, as I’m filling in the details, I find a gentleman who died in this town, and in fact was buried right up the road – of course, he couldn’t be the father; one he was a bit old and more importantly, he died three years before my lovely spouse was born. But then I find his wife as well, and yes, Smith is a freaking common name, but it does show up in my spouses list of surnames, so… possible grandparental match.
Of course, further up, every tree that showed up as a hint for someone else had a daughter born a good 80 years before her father was born. I mean, I get some people don’t bother -looking-, I mean, I didn’t catch it the first time myself, but… everyone? So, my first protip for doing genealogical research is – check dates. Also, my biggest complain with records on Ancestry [which is what you are paying a monthly fee for] is how many times they scramble spouses and children – like putting records under the wrong person – so watch for that too.
Anyway, that’s it for this week – I’m not sure what next week will hold – I’m waiting on my dna test from Ancestry [it was majorly on sale, so what the heck?] and then it will be send it off and wait for the results. I do hope that it might help with some of the weird results on my own tree.