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Archiver > ROOTS > 1988-11 > 0595094077


From: Alf Christophersen 02 45 41 97 <>
Subject: Letter from SOC.ROOTS on UseNet NetNews
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 88 16:54:37 ECT


Path: ndsuvm1!cunyvm!nyser!cmx!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.
edu!sunybcs!boulder!ncar!tank!sphinx.uchicago.edu
!see1
From: (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: relatively calm reply to Mr. Wilson (Roots-Index is fine, but...)
Message-ID: <>
Date: 7 Nov 88 19:39:46 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Reply-To: (Ellen Keyne Seebacher)
Sender:
Lines: 86

I would appreciate letters from anyone (thanks, Howard) with a firm opinion
on this...

I said:
>>Roots-Index doesn't do much good for those of us who are still searching for
>>*any* information on a variety of lines, and want to connect with anyone else
>>who has *any* information on those lines.

And John Wilson replied:
>With this in mind, I created the INDEX to be used as a *SOURCE* of informa-
>tion by readers who were hopefully half-assed serious about genealogy, had
>done some significant compiling and/or research of their own and have an
>*ongoing* interest of furthering their efforts.

It was implied that some of us who have less information are not "half-assed
serious." Thanks so much for fostering enthusiasm in those of us who have
fewer living relatives or county records to work from. Not to mention those of
us who have full-time jobs, classes AND family concerns, and can only do
genealogy in the eleven free minutes we have per week.

I made what I thought was a perfectly reasonable suggestion, for a list which
could help less-experienced genealogists connect, and John Wilson complained:

>I'm not sure of your use of the word `we'. Perhaps YOU should start and
> maintain an alternative INDEX. I will gladly E-mail you the occasional
> requests for addition to the ROOTS-INDEX that I receive that have over
> two hundred names, with dates beginning and ending a few decades apart,
> with migrations that begin and end in the same place, with duplicate
> names, with no return paths, ...etc. In other words, the requests of
> people who have done little actual genealogy work on their own but who
> would be glad to receive the work of others.
>I could think up some appropriate names for you to call your new index but
> I am neither angry enough nor impolite enough to include them in this
> article.

Thank you, John, I think you've been impolite enough already. Did it occur
to you that there are reasons for dates "beginning and ending a few decades
apart"? Such as maternal ancestry? I know my mother's mother's mother's
line back several generations, but the surname keeps changing, and in each
case on that side of my family the fathers have been harder to trace back.
If the only Meuttmann ancestors I am certain of are my great-great-
grandmother and her father, perhaps giving the names and dates will help
contact cousins who may know more, right?

>How much effort have you put into your tracing? Chicago is a fairly large
> city. Have you checked for an LDS - IGI library there?
>Have you written
> or interviewed your living relatives?

Yes, of course. I'm not completely clueless. The LDS records are not nearly
the panacea you make them out to be: I've traced a *probable* Seebacher line
back to the Thirty Years' War, when the Austrian records are, shall we say,
sketchy...villages were wiped out, and so were their records. Immigration
records have been very hard to find for at least a half-dozen of my German
ancestors. And so on.

I have the family-interview information; now I need to get it across the
water and firmly pin it down. Why you are so opposed to help from other
netters is beyond me.

>Have you attempted to compile what
> information you do have into computer transferrable or line printer
> printable form so that you can E-mail it or U.S.Mail it to others?

Yes, of course. I keep all my family group sheets on a Macintosh.

>> (And, of course, Seebacher...)
>>Anyone with ANY information on these names is more than welcome to contact
>>me at:
>
>RIGHT!

Tell me, John, why are you so hostile? Those of us with European peasant names
have a much harder time with this, and would appreciate any leads. Notice I
did not say "would appreciate all the information some deadly-serious geneal-
ogist has compiled after twenty years of hard work." If you, or anyone else,
doesn't care to help, that's your problem. I wouldn't want you to.

>PAX

Uh-huh. Further flames to /dev/null.

Ellen Keyne Seebacher University of Chicago Computing Orgzns.

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