Today's Article
Happy Anniversary to Us
by Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG

Today is an anniversary. This column is my one-hundredth column for Ancestry Daily News. Many of you tell me that you read my columns and print them out, so I really believe that this is OUR anniversary.

I’d like to take the opportunity to look back at some of the topics that I’ve covered. I like to make the subjects of my columns, taken as a whole, demonstrate what genealogy and family history is about--and what it should be about.

Puzzles
My first column appeared on 24 February 2000. It was called “Lessons Learned from a Jigsaw Puzzle” and addressed the pitfalls in handling genealogical problems that don’t fit a classic model. I just reread it while writing this article. I ought to reread it more often.

I guess my life is fairly genea-centric. I seem to see lessons in genealogy everywhere. Two years later, I was much wiser as I assembled another jigsaw puzzle in “Lessons Learned from a Jigsaw Puzzle II.”

And when insomnia drove me to a book of classic detective stories, I found that Dr. Watson had been the recipient of an excellent piece of “Genealogical Advice from Sherlock Holmes.”

We’ve celebrated birthdays (“As Time Goes By” ), Christmas (“Jingle Bells” ( ), and New Year’s (“Where Will Your Research Take You in 2001?” and “Looking Backward, Looking Forward”).

You’ve seen me clean my office (“The Wings of a Butterfly” ) and organize my time (“Genealogy on Four Hours a Week.”

Some columns presented advice on methodology (usually by example). My second column “I Hate Leftovers!” described my vacation and a principle that still guides my research. Others included “Red Flags and Rationalization,” “All the Easy Ancestors Are Taken,” and "Precious Siblings.”

Although I don’t often write about my own ancestral research, I have shared a little of it. An Inspector Morse episode on PBS’s Mystery! prompted me to tell you about my paternal grandmother’s family in “Investigating Family Stories." You’ve learned about a perturbing find in my maternal grandmother’s family in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Land Office.”

Research for my clients provides all kinds of surprising and informative things I want to share. In “A Colonial Record Odyssey” we learned that I needed to have flexibility as I followed a frustrating and surprising problem through one American colony after another.

One of the things I discovered in writing the columns was that there was often a lot to discuss. For example, I’d only planned to write one column on dates, but before it was all done, I’d found it necessary to write six of them! Two on “Recording and Interpreting Dates,” (Part 1 and Part 2) and two on “When You Don't Have a Record,” (Part 1 and Part 2) and two on “Using Dates to Improve Your Research” (Part 1 and Part 2).

Surprises abounded in my research, and I got to share some of them with you. I’ve found connections to a Rembrandt in “Why I Never Get Anything Done on Time”, to vampires in “Searching for Substance”, and to the New Jersey hockey team “Following Devilish Leeds.”

Most recently, there have been two series. The Wordscape columns present explanations and context for terminology we are likely to encounter in our research, as in “Relativity.” The popular nursery-rhyme series has discussed elements of early-American life, from epidemics in “Ring around a Rosie” to the most recent “Weaving and Linen.” I ran out of nursery rhymes. I often found that once I began exploring what I thought was a simple subject, it turned out to be much more involved than I imagined. My image of our ancestors’ lives has been considerably altered.

Writing the columns for Ancestry Daily News forces me to stretch and learn. They force me to examine the accuracy of what I say. They force me to quantify my logic processes in order to explain them to others. They force me to be a better genealogist. I hope they help you, too.

Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, is an instructor and professional genealogist. Her oft-migrating ancestors lived in all of the original colonies prior to 1800 and in seventeen other states, presenting her with highly varied research problems and forcing her to acquire techniques and tools that help solve tough problems. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History.

Copyright 2006, MyFamily.com.

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Ancestry Quick Tip
P.S. to Feb. 2 Clipping
Paul Drake JD
Genealogist & Author

It may be of interest to your readers that the excerpts of Feb. 2 clipping having to do with the Virginia prohibitions to marriages to siblings of deceased spouses was not acted upon till 1848.

Though changes had been suggested in the legislature MANY times over the 50 years, that ban continued from 1792 until 1848. Virginia was the strictest of the Southern colonies in that regard.

Genealogy without documentation is nothing.

Paul Drake JD

Thanks to Paul for today’s Quick Tip! If you have a tip you would like to share with researchers, you can send it to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com.

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Clipping of the Day
The Storm
Anti Masonic Star (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania), 09 February 1831, page 3:

The last Winchester (Va.) Republican says: "Saturday, the 15th January, 1831, will ever stand forth a memorable day in our annals. Never was a snow storm before known here, nor does any person whom we have seen remember to have witnessed one more severe elsewhere."

There was an unusual scarcity of fuel in Winchester, at the time of this snow storm--owing to the bad state of the roads by the previous long continued wet weather. There was great suffering in consequence. The approaches to the town being rendered impassable, there was no getting a supply of wood from the country. In this extremity, the Republican says: "Our townsmen commenced demolishing their out-buildings--embracing stables, dairies, corn houses, pig styes, &c. Many ornamental trees were cut down; among othere, a part of that beautiful row of large poplars on Cork-street, between Loudoun and Cameron. An old oak tree, in the yard of the Hon. Judge White, which had stood there for centuries, attracting the admiration of every passer-by for its majesty and antiquity, also fell beneath the axe; and on Tuesday, the water logs which were taken up during the last summer, and replaced with iron pipes, were distributed among the poor and destitute.--It is supposed they amounted to 6 or 8 cords. We have been told of one poor woman who burned her table and bread-tray to keep her children from famishing.

Members with access to the Historical Newspapers Collection can view this clipping here.

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Fast Fact
Search the Ancestry World Tree

The Ancestry World Tree contains more than 200 million names in family trees submitted by our users and is the largest collection of its kind on the Internet. Search it free and see if you there are lost relatives out there who have information on your family.

Click here to search the Ancestry World Tree.

Product Spotlights

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Thought for Today
Henry Ward Beecher

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.

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