My sister sent me an email recently, and I only plugged my computer (desktop of course, laptop is still MIA) in last evening, having had it off for a few days while moving things around and fixing things. The email she sent me was a link to a genealogy for a family we are supposedly connected to, and it had different info for a part of the info that supposedly pertains to us directly, than what has be told us by others researching similar lines, but not ours personally.
In fact, this family line I had contact with the owner of one site over discrepancies, but still they are up. The neat thing is that the newer info I saw on the other site last night is encouraging, a work towards an understanding of the gap, perhaps. All in all it’s not totally helpful since in the 1500’s it’s not always easy to know dates of everyone. I find that listed info that continues on for generations is always someone elses direct line, mine ends with some woman, or begins with some mystery man. Not entirely, I mean we have a lot of decent connections known, just not everything, not by far (it’s crazy, it’d be really wierd if we DID have more, there is so much to know with the little we do know!)
I was up late last night researching the internet for something because of this. Last year or the year before I had stumbled onto something and had a hunch that a person with a certain name had to be connected to these other people in some way, and be connected to my direct line somehow, not that THEY would be directly related, but maybe a side-ways relation, uncle, etc. So last night I started hounding at that hill again, and picked up a large scent and started reading things of Latin that I had long before stopped (since the only latin I know is the basic nothing of knowing English which is very friendly to latin in many ways), and found more and found German sites that I could translate that talked briefly about the person here and there. I looked at the latin things again and found that I was reading them with more context than before, and finding great delight in that. I also found that, whether there is basis to this or not, I would put a word or phrase into Google translator as Italian to English, and it’d get me the basic word understanding, though it wasn’t “Italian” but seemed so in many ways to me, who knows little about Italian, but more than I do about some languages, though I’m familiar with Spanish, and have waded through tons of Dutch genealogies enough to have a gist of that language for context digging, and also German is somewhat contextable too, French atimes is as well, as well as all those lanuages having a part in American English for sure, making them easier for anyone to just dive into looking at to gain perspective. All in all I came away with wanting to read Latin better, and determining it’s worth starting study of it with my eldest now, I guess, and I have found a lot f interesting latin texts online that would be a delicious challenge to peruse (reading source, ah the joy.) I’ve never studied latin before, mind you. I never wanted to learn it in school ’cause it seemed so dry to others taking it. I’m all for living books, and that would include latin learning. FWIW
So anyhow I found that time the other year an obscure reference to someone that just seemed like they would know about what I was wanting to know. Of course they are long dead, but it does seem as I’ve found out that the person was indeed connected to the ones I wondered about, for sure. And still I don’t know about the “missing generations” the quizical pondering of who it is, which generation is the one placed with, what year born, or died, or married. What children did they have. How well did the noteworthy one know my actual ancestor that is missing. That in their day they just knew them and didn’t consider someone in 2006 would wonder who they are, what chidlren did they have, what year did this or that happen in. :rolleyes:
This very frustrating business is case in point for me: I may look for a published family tree, and find that so and so is listed and that part is right, and then find they only follow one person from this or that generation and there was nothing new to glean from them. Dead ends, dead ends. But every so often something new comes online, like the other day my sister found something that was different, and no one else is listing it that way.
It seems that there is value in having people in areas where ancestors came from. They sometimes are happy to list all research they can find on the people connected to whatever it is they are researching. It’s an odd perspective for me to consider, since we today, my family, left this and that area, and that and that and that area and this and that other area and on and on so long ago. People actually live in all the old ancestoral haunts today. They can go and view library documents, church documents, town history. Lucky them. Really.