Could you guys tell me about your geneology research?

Question

Could you guys tell me about your geneology research?

Answer 1

What do you want to know?  Any seasoned genealogist can write and write and write and WRITE about research for several days on end without taking a break! You might want to be more specific or you will get much more information than perhaps you are looking for.  

Answer 2

no

Answer 3

Basically, it all started with a nickname.

I wanted to know my great-grandfathers real first name, so I asked my dad.

My dad said everyone called him "Kern", short for "Colonel", but he wasn't sure if it was a name, title or rank. He died when my dad was 10 years old.

So, I wrote to my dad's sister, the family gossip and know-it-all.

She sent me a copy of an old fashioned hand-typed, detailed family history of my grandmothers family, dating back to the Colonial period of the Province of South Carolina, 9 generations of one line.

She also included my grandfathers family history, covering 5 generations of my maiden name.

It verified his real first name was Colonel, not a title or rank.

After that, I was hooked and have been for 30 years.

I researched my paternal and maternal families for 28 years, without benefit of the Internet, verifying my findings thru numerous certified documents, which I purchased.  

The stacks of paper I have collected over the years continues to grow and requires filing, daily. I can't throw any of them away. They're as much a part of my connection to my ancestors as the last afghan my grandmother made, which is draped over my sofa.

Genealogy is not my hobby or my obsession.

It is my passion and I, truly, love it.

And, I don't do it for anyone else's benefit, only mine.

Answer 4

I started research BC.

Before computers (internet).  

My ex husband's grandmother had an old, handwritten family history, that she asked me to update.. it is all her fault that I am here. I won't tell you how much money I spent on phone bills, when people still paid for long distance. I have stomped lost cemeteries, and dug through old books at courthouses.  I drink coffee and smoke.. and was allowed to volunteer at an LDS library (and had good friends there who tolerated me). I didn't do it there, of course. I came back to Texas, from CA, for a family reunion that I organized.. fell in love with the place and finally moved back here. My children think picnics in cemeteries is very normal.

When I started to run out of my "own" relatives to research, I'd grab someone else's. Found out that my ex husband and new husband are 7th cousins.  I keep telling people.. DON'T do it the easy way, you miss all the real fun and challenge of finding what no one else knows.