Genealogy Babble

written: Oct 18th

I finally sat down, put my direct ancestor's family tree together and figured out where my major mistake was.  There went THREE hours of time.  But I am glad to have finally figured out where I went wrong and took the time to delete all the incorrect family members and then add them where they are supposed to be.  Total family moved around = 112 individuals.  WHEW!  Even I did not realize how bad it was and yet I was STILL avoiding it like the plague because I knew it wasn't going to be some sweet and easy fix.

The bad news?  I'm pretty sure there is another blunder way out there in my tree.  ::sighs::  I'll have to locate it and print that section.  Then tape it all together and hang it up so I can visually see where I need to do some pointed research to see which branch is correct.  All of this would be WORLDS easier to do if I just had about 12 feet long of blank wall space that I could hang the family trees up to inspect.  But I don't have 12 feet of blank wall space, so I had to get creative.  My current family tree (just the direct ancestors of my maternal grandfather going back 14 generations from him, so 16 generations for me) is hanging up over my big closet in the master bathroom...and even then it's had to curl around two walls.

And this is but a drop in the bucket.  The oldest the printed family tree goes back to (that I have hanging up in my bathroom) is 1624.  The oldest relative I have traced back to was born in 1433.  So almost two hundred MORE years of ancestors.  I cannot even begin to imagine just how large this family tree (with more than 3100 individuals listed) would be, if I were to print it all out.  It would probably kill a small forest for the paper, and I would have to hang it from my 3rd floor apartment and take up most of the side of the building!  ::laughs::

Eventually, I would like to put together a binder with all the historical documents and photographs of whatever ancestors I do have.  And I would like to include as much personal detail as I can find on each one.  And I've already got all the ancestor gravestones documented from the Burkett cemetery (which is another thing to include).  Honestly, I can see how some people make a career out of this.  It would be so much fun to dig through all the documents to find information on specific people.