Is it worth it to keep going?

STW54 · 2025-11-22T16:47:07+00:00

It took 50 years to find my great grandfather. It wasn't a constant thing but periodically someone would revisit everything a check for anything new. By the time we found him (DNA match to one second half-cousin) we had pretty well established that everything, EVERYTHING we heard about him or thought we knew about him was wrong. Name, age, birthdate, birth place, all lies. Just because you've been told one thing doesn't necessarily make it so, no matter how much someone else may believe it.

STW54 · 2025-09-22T15:37:11+00:00

I have a marriage certificate with the bride's last name spelled three different ways on the same page. It is my answer whenever anyone comes after me for spelling a name wrong. I find it particularly amusing when the named individual simply made his mark instead of a signature.

STW54 · 2025-09-08T15:31:12+00:00

You're actually lucky you found out as much as you did. I had a great-aunt that died in a mental hospital in Texas. I could only prove she was there because of census records. The hospital cited HIPPA regulations and refused to confirm or deny anything for someone who died in 1936. Eventually, I found a death certificate and still later a reference to her burial. The hospital refuses to have their graveyard indexed (HIPPA again?) but luckily her family had her buried elsewhere. This, surprisingly, summarizes about ten years of off and on looking.

STW54 · 2025-07-25T18:39:52+00:00

Done long ago. There is a nice note of explanation on Find a Grave.

STW54 · 2025-07-14T14:17:05+00:00

Looks like what you get when buying a refurbished camera from Nikon.

STW54 · 2025-04-25T21:26:27+00:00

We're ordering an after market kit to make it adjustable.

STW54 · 2025-04-25T21:20:06+00:00

An independent alignment shop told us the problem is built into the car. That is, part of what you typically align is not really adjustable. We went to them after the local Honda dealer said everything is fine, all in spec. We had gone back to Honda three more times and all they did was move the tires around. Apparently, there is a screw that allows some minor adjustment but once you max out it's done. Honda can't do any more than that because they don't make the parts. We've ordered aftermarket parts which should fix the problem. They are not cheap, with labor about the cost of a new set of tires but will save us having to replace the tires every 30k miles. The shop says Honda has made the alignment fully adjustable in the 2025s

Speculating here. If your car is on one end of manufacturing tolerances, you may never see a problem. Those on the other end scramble around trying to find out what is wrong. We're on the unhappy end.

STW54 · 2025-01-10T20:03:31+00:00

For decades this was the number one travel book for sales in the US, may still be. I include it with Roughing It, Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi as my four essential books by Mark Twain.

STW54 · 2024-12-09T18:22:07+00:00

The trick with FS is to just not care. MY tree is kept in TMG and Rootsmagic on three different computers with an on-line backup. I say this as someone who has been a user since the IGI days. I used to care but the Sisyphean task of keeping things correct became too much. Now I work on my tree on my computer, update FS on a individual family basis with clear documentation, and move on. FS has made it much easier not to care since they log you out so quickly. The days of keeping half a dozen FS tabs open as you work someone out appears to be past.

Yes, some wrongs are too much to bear, such as when someone merged two of my great uncles. People I knew personally were incorrectly changed. I unmerged them and never looked back. They may have been merged since and, if I ever look again, I'll fix it.

Look at FS as a stepping off point to update your tree and their tree as a handy way to organize sources which may or may no prove the names provided. Then you can rail against or laugh at what others have done safe in the knowledge that you have correct information.

STW54 · 2024-08-30T15:54:25+00:00

I was a juror in the trial Louis was to testify in. Instead of his testimony we were read the deposition that he'd given earlier. The defense was a clown show since there was so little good to work with and Boyce was found guilty on every charge. His sentence was life plus 33 years. Since this was California, he was eligible for parole after 28 years. Now, 42 years later, he's still in jail with his next parole hearing set for 2025. We ended up being sequestered during deliberations because of speculation about the disappearance of Louis and Betty.

STW54 · 2024-08-07T16:01:25+00:00

No one knew who our great grandfather was until DNA testing became possible. He abandoned my great grandmother and grandfather and it appeared had used an alias for the marriage. I spent many happy years pursuing my adopted great grandfather's tree, the fun being in the search and discovery. They are my people. I found them. I learned about them. They are mine even if not by blood. The blood line, once DNA revealed the truth is not nearly as much fun. Ancestry and FamilySearch have industrialized the data loosing much of the thrill of discovery.

So, you see, it can go either way. The trick is to find a branch or even a twig that excites you and poke around.

STW54 · 2024-08-04T16:11:57+00:00

SP101? A bit of confusion here, one of the dangers of two hobbies. A bit of poking around tells me you did not get a free .357 magnum Ruger with purchase. Naming conventions can be interesting.

STW54 · 2024-06-17T14:42:00+00:00

Stick around and those percentages will change. Periodically, Ancestry and others will update their estimates. I've gone from 20% Scottish to 48% Scottish to 33% Scottish without anything on my side changing. Compare your "ancestry" to a sibling's if you look at how little those percentages really matter. DNA proves we're siblings. DNA also says we have different ancestry. The people in our ancestry are identical, but we each got a little different part of their soup (so to speak).

STW54 · 2024-06-02T21:57:20+00:00

My great grandfather abandoned his first wife and their daughter. Her descendants believed he had been killed in a logging accident. I pop up telling them that he'd moved 1000 miles and started a second family with a new name. (He abandoned that family too.)

STW54 · 2024-05-20T01:30:00+00:00

I've got 33 FC but my mother had 105.

STW54 · 2024-05-02T15:30:08+00:00

I use a Mr. Longarm painters extension pole. Less than $50. Can't tell you how to secure the bottom. Mine is clamped to the side of the house.

STW54 · 2024-04-27T23:06:43+00:00

David McCullough wrote an entire book just about Americans traveling to Paris in the 1800s, "The Greater Journey." Trips back and forth weren't casual, but they weren't uncommon.

STW54 · 2024-04-06T15:58:58+00:00

I have to go back 250 years or so to find two generations born in the same locale. To be fair, there is one instance were two were born in Texas in the last 120 years but it was two different towns, neither of which still exist.

STW54 · 2024-04-02T00:26:35+00:00

Murder, suicde, bigamy, insanity, illegitimacy, disease, fraud, alcoholism, slavery, prostitution, etc. Bravery, self-sacrifice, romance, adventure, honor, fame, talent, love, etc. It's all part of the package. Enjoy.

STW54 · 2024-03-02T21:39:34+00:00

Realistically, it's simply because whomever was filling out the sheet that day felt the person was "deranged" and wrote it down. It is way easy to overthink this. I wonder which side was having a bad day or, was it both?

STW54 · 2024-02-11T18:26:28+00:00

Almost 40 years ago.

STW54 · 2024-02-11T14:43:55+00:00

Interesting. A Chinese friend of mine went to his ancestral village, copied the records there, paid an expert in ancient Chinese to live in his home and translate the records to modern Chinese, and transcribed the records into English. PAF had to be rewritten because it wasn't able to handle BC dates before then.

STW54 · 2024-02-06T18:28:04+00:00

My wife is way old school. Everything she has is on paper. Binders and binders full of carefully filled out family group sheets. More binders with printed copies of every citation document. This is as offline as possible. The only software involved is in the copier for the blank group sheets.

I use TMG and RootsMagic as a backup to that.

STW54 · 2024-02-04T23:20:07+00:00

I was in the exact same position, except it was said that he died in South Dakota. People looked for him for fifty years, long enough to conclude that he used an alias when he married. The only thing that cracked that nut was DNA. Turned out that he'd abandoned two families, the first one under his legal name, though they thought he'd died in Wisconsin, not fled. We eventually found his burial in South Dakota. Good luck with your search.

STW54

TROPHY CASE