I made HUGE mistakes! Full stop. I made HUGE ancestry research mistakes when I randomly began the journey one day. I was months in to this crazy tree I had created and tempted to give up but that is just not my nature. You finish what you start. So, I persevered and here I am today. It was a love of learning about me, history and discovering my little part in the world that just kept me going and going and going… You get the point.
It seems there are at least three avenues taken with people who pursue their ancestry. One sees a commercial and thinks, “Amazing! I want to discover my ancestors too.” They go online and see it’s free for 14 days and maybe a bit overwhelming and give up. Another type pushes past this and goes in deeper feeling the bug like I did and does it here and there and gets further and further but it takes time. Maybe they keep going or maybe they too, give up. The third is the crazy type (me) who becomes obsessed and doesn’t give up and just really enjoys this hobby and does it as much and when they can.
I wasted a lot of time in the beginning.
I added wrong people. I trusted the people before me knew what they were doing. I accepted every hint and never or rarely read them. This is not how a genealogist works. Not even close. I spent months and months trying to make corrections because my German Virgo self was living in a nightmare with the mess and it WAS a mess. The ancestry research mistakes I made stemmed from not actually doing “research”. I also like things “pretty” so the the photos I chose had to be just right too. Told you. Total German Virgo here.
Why am I telling you this?
Because this is the point where people who give up need to ask for help. If the bug hit you with interest in your family ancestry then I can promise 99% you will learn something about your ancestors that sheds new light on you.
I learned a lot building this crazy tree of mine and it wasn’t even just my ancestry but a lot of history. This screen shot is of Charlemagne’s ancestors. He was quite prolific in fathering children. I’m not at all promising you that famous people are in your tree and it is DIFFICULT and time consuming to get to this point. I also included the ancestry of numerous other famous people in history for fun. I say for fun because there is no way I’d say with 100% certainty that I am related to the likes of Cesar’s (THE Cesar stabbed dozens of times) sister or the prophet Mohammed. But my very nosey, I mean inquisitive self, loved every minute of it.
All this said though, the part of my tree that really kept me going was the discovery of learning my grandparents had eloped a month before they married in public with family and friends. I had discovered a secret that had been kept quiet for DECADES! The unknown seems to be why many seek help in researching their ancestry and sometimes those answers are found and sometimes they are not. I will never know why they eloped. I can only guess. But it was researching records that got me there. Not everyone has the patience or desire or knowledge to do something that probably sounds boring and totally mundane.
I chose to do it right.
Like my career in photography, I just randomly decided that I was going to build a business doing genealogy et voila, here I am. The journey took me down centuries of history of people I never knew, choosing to study the right way to do genealogy for two years and letting the world know that I was finally ready.
I am here to assist in whatever I can in your research if you have decided that while you want to learn about your ancestors you just don’t have the time or knowledge to get there. I want to save you time and effort from making ancestry research mistakes like I did and get it right from the start. Contact me if you want to save 1000s of hours of your life HERE and just get to the point-learning from my mistakes.
