My Family Tree Looks Lop-sided

It would not be possible for me to record all my ancestors back 23 generations, because the number of ancestors doubles every generation - 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 gr-grandparents. Going back 23 generations everyone has an astounding 8,388,608 ancestors.

Now, here is why my family tree is lop-sided.

After my 3rd gr-grandparents, I lose the trail on half my ancestors. Another two generations and I've lost the trail on half of what remains. So the known portions of my family tree begins to narrow, until there is a particular branch, my 9th gr-grandmother in 1577, who is connected to ordained men with degrees from Cambridge, who are in turn connected to landed gentry, on up to minor nobility and knights.


At that point, the relatives are people whose lives are recorded in wills, deeds, church records, etc. That portion of my family tree blossoms out into a massive branch, nearly rivaling the main trunk.

Which brings us to the year 1215 and a meadow called Runnymede, by the river Thames, where King John capitulated to the demands of his churchmen and barons and signed a document known as Magna Carta. Among other things, this guaranteed the right to a trial by one's peers, and is regarded as a landmark in the struggle for equality and human rights.

So my family tree now looks more like a lop-sided hour-glass, but I'm fine with that. Perhaps, among all those names, is an ancestor who was on that field with the barons and King John.


It boggles my mind to consider the possibility, but - my ancestors are witnesses of history. They came over the Oregon Trail in 1852. They fought in the Civil War (on both sides). They fought in the Revolution of 1776. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean in frail sailing ships in 1632 for the freedom to practice their Puritan faith.

It is humbling and challenging to feel the weight of their courage, commitment and conscience. How might I be a worthy descendant of their blood?

Fabulous Tool or Fabulous Confusion? Think Before You Click

April's Tree
When I reactivated my Ancestry.com membership and bought  Family Tree Maker 2012 with sync, I also re-ignited my interest in  family history. Because together these resources form a powerful tool for finding the branches of the family tree, and documenting them faster than ever.

While speeding down the old ancestral road, I discovered that the convenience of merging data from other family’s trees may end up costing me more time and effort in the long run.

A three-hundred year old woman? How did that get in my tree? Checking the name, I found eight other trees with the same mistake. Longevity is booming at ancestry.com.

Worse, I found more subtle data corruption with wrong names being insinuated into my tree. Garril cannot be mistaken for Garrison. Yet when I looked for corroborating sources to confirm the marriage of Henry Harris Harper Gandy to Tamsin Garrison, I found that he married Tamsin Garril. The time I spent carefully deleting wrong people, duplicate people, wrong dates, etc. could have been spent more productively, searching for source records instead.

I can hear you thinking, “That wouldn’t happen in my tree – I’m careful.” Not so fast: when is the last time you ran a duplicate person check? Or a bad data report? When is the last time you ran a source report or better yet, a report on unsourced data?

Today is the day I discovered my task (my obsession, my joy) is far, far larger than I thought it was just yesterday. Each day brings its own various sad or happy enlightenment.

I recently found two of my Arkansas cousins were thoroughly merged into confusion in most of the available trees. Surely they didn’t die on the same day in the same place? Possible but not probable, and could they really have married the same man? I began to dig into their census records, then their marriage records, and finally their cemetery records.

I found they were twins, Emmie and Addie Twiggs, born 10 Mar 1867 in Union County, Georgia. Emma married Alf Palmer in 1884; they had a baby, B E Palmer, in 1885 who died in 1886, and is buried in Fairmount Cemetery, Gentry, Arkansas. Emmie’s death followed her baby’s a few months later, and she is buried in the same cemetery, E A Palmer.

Her gravestone is mis-read at Find-a-Grave as born 1862, instead of 1867, however the “10 Mar” birth date is quite clear, and so is the correct year (1867) in the enlarged photograph. She died 2 Dec 1886. Her sister Addie Twiggs, happily, went on to marry Thomas L. Downum in 1887, and had nine children (eight still living in 1910). She died in 1919.

Although the transcribed marriage records for the story above are muddled in several cases, what happened can be worked out using just the data available on Ancestry.com and Find-a-Grave, (although, unfortunately, not by using the trees).

I have concluded that other trees, at best, might point the way to search for names and places. The best of them include source references that I can then go and search, but actually merging must be an extremely rare and cautious enterprise.

What is Anagogical?

I love to come across unfamiliar words. I enjoy tracking them down to their lair and discovering their meanings, usage and pronunciation. The word today, anagogical, comes from John Granger in Harry Potter's Bookshelf. The definition comes from Merriam-Webster online: "interpretation of a word, passage, or text (as of Scripture or poetry) that finds beyond the literal, allegorical, and moral senses a fourth and ultimate spiritual or mystical sense" Of the several online dictionaries I checked, only Merriam-Webster puts anagogical in its proper literary context of four interpretations of a text. Granger applies all four interpretations to the Harry Potter books, beginning with the literal and ending with the mystical (anagogical) sense of the plot, action, dialog, names, colors and numbers in the books. Some of Granger's revelations are not only stunning to me, but so obvious once they were pointed out that I was embarrassed to not have seen them already. (Anagogical is a word new to the spell checker for eblogger - it keeps wanting me to change it to 'analogical', which is not at all the same. What a difference one letter makes.)

Friends: old, true and gone

I have reached that time in my life when nearly every week brings news of a classmate that has passed on. A reminder that we graduated as a group from high school but we graduate to what is next individually, at seemingly random times and places.

This is a time to appreciate old friends and true: the ones who look me up on Facebook to say we are still friends after all these years; the ones who send emails and letters and cards, even though my response is sporadic at best; the ones who text me their important events as they happen. All generous souls who share their love and hopes, concerns and fears, with a dollop of humor and a helping of humility.

I am so grateful to be included in their lives, however haphazardly, for I am inconsistent in communications, often turning inward with depression, something I want not to share but probably most need to. This afternoon I have an appointment with a mind doctor (aka psychiatrist). I wonder if psychic surgery were possible, would we choose to have painful memories excised? But that is a function of many anti-depressants - to repress the sad memories and enhance the good times. Too bad my biochemistry repudiates those happy pills and produces nasty side-effects. Oh well, when life gives you sh**, plant flowers!

Vampires Biting Mother Earth

A recent development in drilling for natural gas, "high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking", resonates with me as a strong corollary to vampires biting our Mother Earth. Like the mythical monsters of blood-sucking fame who inject their poison to paralyze their victims and then drain them of life, these corporate monsters inject poisons into our earth before draining her of fluids. Or at least, that is the nightmare I had last night, and waking did not dispel it, as proven here: The New York Times: Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers. What is next on the agenda? Glow-in-the-dark rivers? Glow-in-the-dark people? Perhaps when their profit-dollars also glow in the dark they will not want them quite so much? I thought Erin Brokovitch fought and won this battle for us already, but the undead monster has risen again to torment mankind. As long as profits outstrip pollution-penalties, corporations will ignore the risks to humanity.

Bit by the Inspiration Bug

Nothing else has changed - still looking for a house, still dealing with fibromyalgia, still deeply affected by unrelenting gray skies of winter BUT - my muse is back.

Don't know where she's been for two years, don't know why she popped up this week, but having a great time immersed in dirigibles, writing a steam-punk plot. Why should I be surprised? My favorite movies fall into or near this genre: The Golden Compass; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Cradle of Life; Sherlock Holmes etc.

Doing the research on dirigibles I find facts that are stranger than fiction. Who knew the Victorian Age was so scientific, so accomplished?