Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Frustrated Genealogist

An interesting quotation from the "Genealogies" section of the book "History of Hartford, Vermont, July 4, 1761 - April 4, 1889" published 1889 (transcribed by Coralynn Brown):

No one who has not made genealogical researches, can form a just idea of the difficulties of gathering facts requisite to completeness in the work. The formation of a historical memorial of a family, even of the least volume, cannot be accomplished without the co-operation of many willing hearts and hands, especially in the absence of full and complete written records, such as should be kept by every family in the land.

It is surprising that there are so many people who take but little, if any, interest in the story of their lineage, or in the perpetuation of their own memory, or, at least, sufficient interest to lead them to prepare and carefully preserve a memorial relating to the special branch of the family to which they belong.

How few there are who know anything of their ancestry back of their grandparents. And, why is it that many people who are able to trace their paternal ancestry back for several generations, are unable to trace their maternal ancestry even to their grandparents?


Ah, the timeless frustrations of the lonely genealogist. Has it changed since 1889? Not likely, eh?

Coralynn Brown has been transcribing a number of New England, NY and NJ records and posting them to Jane Devlin's web site - the new additions to Jane's site are here, and coralynn Brown has provided a great number of them.

Efforts by people like Coralynn, Jane, Ray, Janice and many others relieve the frustrations of many genealogists, and we owe them our gratitude.

Thanks to Ken Newton of CVGS for passing this along. By following this lead, I found a big Newton family in the Hartford VT book - not mine, but they must be someone's - the settler had like 16 kids with one wife.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Randy. It's nice to know that you're finding information that you can use on our site. You're correct that Coralynn has been instrumental in making the site what it is today. Thanks for the compliments!