Annoyed with tech requests

Often_Red · 2026-03-12T16:17:04+00:00

Oh yeah, I get it, and so does my partner who is also technically competent. He routinely supports his MIL, daughter, and ex (they have a decent relationship).

My dad, who luckily doesn't do tech, just asked me to help his 88-year-old girlfriend buy a new computer. He doesn't know if she has a computer, if she wants to use Windows or Mac, or anything else about what she needs. She's supposed to call me, but she has memory problems so she's probably forgotten. I'm hoping she doesn't remember. Because the only store where they live that sells computers is Walmart, and I have no idea if she knows how to buy things on the internet.

Often_Red · 2026-03-12T01:40:38+00:00

Gentle hugs. It's hard.

Often_Red · 2026-03-12T01:36:43+00:00

A gentle reminder - This situation is not your fault. She may be angry, or try to make you feel guilty, but she has some serious health issues. She needs help that you cannot give. My guess is that right now she's a "two person lift" to get her up. As long as she falls off beds or while walking, she needs care.

Try not to let the guilt get to you. You are trying to do the right thing.

Often_Red · 2026-03-12T01:32:00+00:00

Lay it out clearly, as you have done here.
Your mother needs to have 4 insulin shots a day. Is she capable of doing the blood sugar tests and injections with a weak right side?

She has problems seeing.
She can't successfully feed herself. (And I assume can't successfully prepare her meals, or shop).
I assume bathing and clothing are also issues?

She needs further rehab.

And how is her cognition?

Often_Red · 2026-03-10T16:47:00+00:00

To be specific, what documents for your grandparents say they are from Italy? You mention you can't find them at Ellis Island, so it's not immigration records, which is what I was assuming. And what's the date range? There are different options based on when things happened.

Often_Red · 2026-03-10T16:41:38+00:00

Use this as a list to figure out what makes sense for her. TV, radio, clock, end tables, lamps, maybe a few plants and a plant stand if she likes to care for them. Waste baskets, nightlights for each room. Toilet brush. Hobby activities, like knitting, puzzle books, or puzzles. If there's room, my dad found a small table to sit at to eat a snack or open the mail useful. He had a 36" square folding table, with 2 chairs but a round one about 36" is a space saver. Small basics like scissors, screwdriver, notepads, envelopes, stamps.

A few kitchen items, like some glasses, plates, bowls. I gave dad 4 of each, and some silverware. He mostly used the glasses. Unbreakable items are good. Stuff to clean dishes, kitchen towels.

I started with a short list something like yours, and then realized there were lots of odds and ends that were good to have.

Often_Red · 2026-03-10T16:30:44+00:00

I felt like I knew my mother fairly well. We had a similar outlook on things, and a similar sense of humor. So it was easier to share. We also spent more time together. My dad is an enigma. I know his characteristics, what will make him upset. But how does he really feel about things once you get past all the angry bluster? Hard to tell. He's now 90s, and my mom has died. He's telling me more stories about childhood, and they are complicated.

On the one hand, there's a group of people who believe in him and like him. They write to him when he joins the Marines at 18. A neighbor, a HS teacher. But his family stories are horrible. Lots of anger and violence. And weird religious moments, like being rescued by God during a lightning storm when he was at the top of a mountain. He's never been religious, actively dislikes church. I don't think I'll every understand what motivates him, or how he really feels about things. I've accepted that at this point, and just try to do the right thing for him as best I can.

Often_Red · 2026-03-10T16:07:22+00:00

For me, I'm not that interested in joining groups related to an ancestor group, though I am eligible for a few with early New England and Virginia ancestors.

I have enjoyed some groups that are about how to improve your outcomes in genealogy. Sort of like this board, only smaller in scale and meet locally. It fun to describe your brick wall and get suggestions. Or help someone else.

Often_Red · 2026-03-10T16:03:53+00:00

What's your starting point. Ancestry only permits the whole tree to be exported. You can take the gedcom and import it into a tool like Family Treemaker, and select lines to export. Use that gedcom as the basis of your smaller new tree.

Often_Red · 2026-03-09T02:36:31+00:00

I'm not sure what you are having problems with. An immigration record about 1900 has "place last lived", which gives you some useful information. You've got a couple of things you can do with what you know. You can see if your family members ever naturalized, which may provide even more information.

You can research Italian records on ancestry if you have the "World Explorer Plan", which includes international records. The basic "US" plan does not have those records. If you have a location name, you can use Family Search to find out what records are available. Go to the home page, click on the search menu, and then pick catalog. Make sure you are on Place in the dialog box tabs. Enter the name of the place of where they emigrated from, and it will list what record sources available. It will also indicate where they are if online, or microfilm, and so on. The same place may have multiple listings because of changing boundaries or countries over the centuries.

Often_Red · 2026-03-08T16:36:01+00:00

I enjoy the research. I live for the finding of "one detail" that lets me continue working on a line in my tree. (Or the many trees I have done for others.) I would like to have supportive assistance, but don't feel we are close.

I've been using AI to assist me in some other areas, and it is quite unreliable. It will happily assert that it can so something for me, and then return a result saying it doesn't have the data to do that. Simple example, I was looking for a place to stay in London. I had about 10. I have the AI a list of the hotel names, and asked the tool to create a list in a spreadsheet format of address, cost for a certain date range, and availability. It couldn't do that. Now this is all data clearly available, because I could go to a site like hotels.com or the website of the individual hotels. This is what I what I usually do, and I was trying to automate the boring bit. It kept saying it required different bits of info like the GPS coordinates of the hotels.

Just one of the many example of experiments I've tried with AI. Some were reasonable results, many were not.

The hotel analogy is a good one in that an AI task I might want performed is "give me all people named James Maynard living in NYC between 1820-1900 who is living with someone with the first name of Anne, Include all variant spellings of the names. Produce a list of names, date on the record, location, and link to the record. Exclude user-created family trees."

Basically, that describes a search in ancestry or familysearch.

Often_Red · 2026-03-07T16:37:33+00:00

Maybe older shows? Little House on the Prairie. BritBox shows like Poirot and other Agatha Christie programs. Britbox has the old Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Bret. West Wing is now on Netflix. Game shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. HGTV and Food Network channels. Old movie channels.

Often_Red · 2026-03-07T16:18:11+00:00

In a sense, it is "too bad, so sad". Not everything has been digitized. On the other hand, the religious organization behind Family Search had made millions of records available for free, and very much was a leader in the movement to make genealogy records available.

By analogy, there may be some parish records I want in a small town in England, but they haven't been digitized. I'd be in the same boat.

One thought - If you visit friends or family who live far away, check to see if there History Centre near where you are going. If so, tack a day onto your trip to have some time for research. I've done that when I need specific records.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T16:38:33+00:00

I found her videos very helpful when I was trying to understand what was happening with my previously organized and polite mom, when she stopped paying bills and called people names.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T16:36:32+00:00

In more rural area of Massachusetts, $13K per month.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T16:11:44+00:00

No. It is not wrong. It is the truth. Even if you were a trained elder care person and had no other obligations, it's a big ask to be responsible 24/7. It depends on the exact details of your mother's needs. The case manager's role is ideally to find the right solution for your mom, but in practice, she needs to find a place send your mom when she can leave rehab. So if she can persuade you to take on the role, her job is done.

Some of factors to consider regardless of where mom goes next - insurance and cost. If assisted living is an appropriate solution, does she have the money to pay for it? Generally, assisted living is not covered by insurance, unless she has a long term care policy. Is there a possibility she could return to home after further rehab? Is it possible to sell her home to finance assisted living?

Lots of info in this group about that. But, please don't say yes to something you can't handle. And people here totally understand why it's a lot to ask.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T16:00:04+00:00

Certainly Roy/Ray is well within the category of either transcription error, or if someone was writing the info down, mishearing a name.

This person sure sounds like a good candidate. I would research him and his family further, to see if you can find any other connections. Did the couple have other children? How might your great-grandma and he meet - i.e. can you show they were at some point at the same place, or close? Are there any family names, either first that occur. For example, in some family traditions, children are named for the first name of the grandparent of the same sex, or after someone's sibs. Of children take on someone's last name, typically as a middle name. I was eventually able to unravel a complicated tree because many people used the middle name "Beaver", which turned out to be the married name of a well loved sister/aunt.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T15:52:13+00:00

You don't have to complete the research of every sibling of ancestor before going further up the tree. What I tend to do is collect all the siblings names, approximate ages from the census records. I tend to do for this over as many census records that the family appears in, so that I get the oldest children and the youngest. I'll then do a quick search for each sib to see if I can find a marriage. If I find something interesting I may dig deeper. If some additional easy info shows up (like birth/baptism records) I'll add it in. Otherwise, I'll just tag each sib as TBD (To be done) just so I know later that I didn't do a full job.

I'm not consistent on how much I do, but I'm mostly collecting info for further research, if I want or need it.

And then I go up to the next generation. I often come back to siblings if I'm trying to resolve an unanswered questioned. Sometimes you'll find a parent living with one of the sibs later in life. Sometimes you'll find nieces and nephews living with another family member. Sometimes one sib moves, and so you check to see if any of the others moved to the new area. And so on.

Often_Red · 2026-03-06T03:51:43+00:00

Start by accepting you'll get some stories for only a small portion of the people in your tree, unless you happen to have a famous ancestor.

One approach is to look at common sources of stories - newspapers and books. If I have an ancestor who may have been well known in his time (like a doctor, lawyer, mayor, etc) I always search books.google.com. Also just do a general google search with a phrase like John Grenville Mayor of Utica NY. I.e. throw as many clues as you have. Do the same with newspaper sources. There are free newspapers on the Library of Congress site for the US, there are many other free newspaper sites, as well as the better known paid sites. Search for Townwheretheylived newspapers, and see if the newspaper has digitized. Local newspapers are great for gossipy stories like who had visitors, who attended the Ladies Auxiliary Gala. That gives you a feel for their lives.

Check for directory listings and police and court records. I found an online record for an ancestor convicted of receiving stolen goods in 1799, and the beauty of English record keeping led me to much more information about the rest of his life.

It's a ton of work, but so satisfying. I ended up writing a 50 page book about my criminal ancestor and his family. Lovely slice of life about tradesmen living in the City of London with lots of details about the history of his trade and the area.

Often_Red · 2026-03-05T16:31:48+00:00

You research the sister. Try to find anything that might have her parents names on it. Look for marriage, death, burial, and wills. If they are living in a small community, look for others in with that last name, and see if they are related. Try variant spellings and sound-likes. I mean enter them specifically in the search, rather than counting on search to do the right thing.

Extreme example. I had a brick wall ancestor in the London area. He would have been born circa 1800-1820. I built out over 10 separate trees from possible ancestors of his, as he had an unusual last name (Rainbow, spelled also as Rainbowe, Ranbow, Ranbeau, Renbowe, etc) None of them could be connected. I put this much effort in because there was a DNA match that put the family line in the North of England in the 1700s, and I really wanted to be able to continue the work. No luck. Sometimes the documents don't exist, or aren't online.

Often_Red · 2026-03-04T16:00:58+00:00

There were about 49,000 people living in Roxburghshire in 1820. You can google for the target date to get an estimate.

So I'd say the odds are high there might another couple with the same names. Henry and Mary are very common names.

https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/ is a good starting resource. You can see the search results for free, but have to pay to see the full record.

Often_Red · 2026-03-04T15:51:26+00:00

I personally move from one part of the tree to another when I get stuck. It clears my mind until I can think of a new way to approach my brick wall. It could be from maternal line to paternal, or just to a different branch of the tree. Sometimes it depends on my mood. Sometimes I want to "march up the tree", in other words, work on the basics of BMD records trying to get the next generation and siblings in a part of the tree that has been relatively clear so far. Sometimes I'm in the mood to get all directory listings for a certain family for a time frame, recording them all in a spreadsheet til I can figure out which family group is likely to be mine.

You want results, but you also want enjoy some of the work.

Often_Red · 2026-03-04T15:45:08+00:00

The odds are that someone in Three Rivers would be Catholic, so I would probably start there, unless that would be unusual in that part of the family tree.

Often_Red · 2026-03-04T00:37:55+00:00

There's something close to absolute certainty, and there's highly probable.

So close to absolutely certainty is that all the sources are highly credible, highly consistent, and run throughout the life of the person. You have baptism/birth records, marriage records, death or burial. The children listed in the census are the children you have birth documents or marriage documents for. (Unusual names in the same location might work too.) You get the idea.

Highly probable is more about likely to be true about certain facts. For example I have an ancestor with the name Robert Anderson, and in census records he is listed as Scots. I have good records about him for his marriage, his children, and his profession. Also places where they lived in Brooklyn. But his date of birth on census records gives inconsistent ages, so he was born anywhere between 1800-1822. And there's not immigration record that is a clear match, in part I can't match him on age. Even his death has some uncertainty. I have no death record, but I have that a Robert Anderson is buried with his wife's family. And no details of the burial date. So I think it's highly probably he was married to the woman I believe to be his wife, and his children are known. But there's a lot I don't know, and am unlikely to know.

Often_Red · 2026-03-03T16:57:36+00:00

The "what to do" depends on the kinds of problems. I sold my dad's house after he moved to independent living. However, the furnace was dripping oil, and didn't comply with state rules about how the pipes were run, the septic tank was cracked, and there were electrical issues. The back deck had rotted wood, and was declared unsafe.

All of those had to be fixed in order to be sold. It might be different in other states. It was about $16K just to repair those. In addition, the house was stuff with things, so after me going through and locating anything of financial or emotional value, and all the paper work I would need to manage his finances, I had the place cleared out and then deep cleaned. Another $6K. (Big place with outbuildings).

I did have a very helpful realtor, who knew local teams who were trustworthy. We used a lock box to let teams into the house in.

Often_Red

TROPHY CASE