PADUTCH-LIFE-L Archives

Archiver > PADUTCH-LIFE > 2007-03 > 1174102836


From: "Richard Berkheiser" <>
Subject: [PD-LIFE] Thought for the Weekend :-) Persisting in GenealogicalResearch
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:39:00 -0500


HI everyone!

Tonight, I hope to start a new feature on this list to help generate more discussion. Thought for the Weekend. The first one goes to none other than Vee L. Housman. I would have just given you the link, but this one deserved a second airing. :-)

What Vee wrote back in 1997 is still true today.

Rick B

--------------------

It sounds like an individual who has just started out researching his family and has no patience in actually WORKING on good hard RESEARCH. It sounds like someone looking for the "quick-fix"--the archived files at his fingertips, the "real hard information" that he can access from the comfort of his computer desk. Why bother sweating over hot cemeteries (or cold drizzly ones, for that matter), agonizing hours at a film-viewer, writer's cramp recording obscure information that you don't even know if it has any bearing on your family, etc.? Who, in their right mind, would plan to spend the next 20 or 30 years of their lives, trying to find those elusive ancestors? Certainly, if we wait long enough someone will set up a website that contains all the "real, hard information" we have been searching for for so many years.It sounds like an individual who has just started out researching his family and has no patience in actually WORKING on good hard RESEARCH. It sounds like someone looking for the "quick-fix"--the archived files at his fingertips, the "real hard information" that he can access from the comfort of his computer desk. Why bother sweating over hot cemeteries (or cold drizzly ones, for that matter), agonizing hours at a film-viewer, writer's cramp recording obscure information that you don't even know if it has any bearing on your family, etc.? Who, in their right mind, would plan to spend the next 20 or 30 years of their lives, trying to find those elusive ancestors? Certainly, if we wait long enough someone will set up a website that contains all the "real, hard information" we have been searching for for so many years.

And those of us who are truly experienced in research will view that information for precisely what it's worth. Is it from primary sources, secondary, tertiary, heresay, or just plain "close enough for government work?" I, for one, would view the veracity of it with a very suspicious eye.

Vee L. Housman
PENNA-DUTCH Mailing List
Tue, 7 Jan 1997 23:11:27 GMT

This thread: