ROOTS & BRANCHES

So, who has some time to hear your “Roots & Branches” columnist vent a little bit?

Thanks for that hearty response of “yes,” readers, so here goes.

I spend more of my life on Facebook than I probably should admit—sure, there are some business reasons for that, but a lot of it has been allowing interaction during the Pandemic times—and those of us on the social media platform probably all have our pet peeves.

Probably the biggest one for me, at least genealogy-wise, are people in Facebook groups who answer a question with the first guess that comes to their mind.

Often erroneously.

Sometimes incompletely.

And a lot of the time … when the question’s already been answered correctly—earlier in the comment thread! Sometimes over and over.

I’m not blaming the administrators of these sites—they are virtually all overworked volunteers whose scare resources need to be devoted to playing umpire to more profound problems in the group.

For the love of Mike, people, please just read the thread before commenting!

Even if you’re sure that you’re right.

First, of all, guess what: You might not be right.

And, secondly, you may well learn something that fine tunes your own knowledge.

One thing I can tell people after more than 35 years of doing genealogy: The longer I do it the more I realize how little I know. So many things I once thought were “always” true … turn out to be more nuanced—or a flat out misinterpretation.

I once would have said that baptismal records could be counted on to list the name of the child. Well, I thought that until I found a pastor’s register in which he listed only the gender of the child (the name could be inferred—but only inferred—from the name of the baptismal sponsor.

And then there’s the idea that U.S. Census records only list general names of birthplaces. Then I found a census in which the enumerator ignored instructions and gave specific village names (Hurray for officials who ignore the rules … well, at least one who ignore them to give more rather than less information!).

I used to make the statement that there were no German census records. Until German genealogy scholar Roger P. Minert discovered that there were such documents (although they are mostly kept in dark corners of local archives and thus not accessible online … hopefully someday!).

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Recall last week’s column trumpeting the deadline of the early bird discount for July’s virtual conference of the International German Genealogy Partnership?

Well, yes, that discount has officially expired but if here’s a reprieve: I have it on good authority (careful “Roots & Branches” readers may recall I’m the conference co-chair … connect the dots!) that the coupon code EARLY will still get you the lower price. But only if you register in April!

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://playbacknow.regfox.com/iggp2021.

To stay up-to-date on conference news, be sure to sign-up for the IGGP conference newsletter here https://bit.ly/IGGPnewsletter.