Used with permission from Steven Young Caudill, photographer Will Rogers is reported to have said , " If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging ." Recently I found myself in a hole of my own making, and took that advice. My first step was a new custom Tree Tag for my Ancestry.com tree: SameNameConfusion to make the profiles easy to find. Previously I wrote about pruning , part of which has been using Ancestry.com's ProTools to find possible duplicate profiles. I've merged hundreds of such profiles without problems. This case seemed simple and obvious on the surface because I saw what I expected to see, rather than what was actually there.  I saw Jane and Eliza J and thought they were the same woman I saw Thomas J Booth and Jefferson Booth, and thought that they were the same man Because both families were in the 1900 census, I did not stop to notice that one family was in Missouri and the other in Iowa  The Jane with no surname had little information, so I merged...

  Two workers pruning street trees in London during World War I,  released by the Imperial War Museum on the  IWM Non Commercial Licence . I have been pruning lately; not outside, where as I write it is still cold, windy and a week ago, slushing.  At first, it was exciting to whack people right out of my Ancestry.com main DNA tree, because some ancient "ancestors" had no sources, and conflicting or nonsense "facts." Delete, delete, delete. But sometimes while falling asleep, I wondered if the name itself is a clue I should have left in the tree.  A recent interview with Roberta Estes * quotes her: "E very connection has the potential to be incorrect.  I’d much rather saw a branch off than continue to bark up the wrong tree. "   I find that statement reassuring.  When I resume researching the pruned line, I'll find evidence unavailable when I was a beginner. Back then, I blindly trusted other people's trees. I thought that they had done thei...

Spring=New Growth For gardeners, spring is time for sowing new seeds, and enjoying previous plantings' fresh growth and blooms. It's also time to get ahead of the spring weeds! Genealogists and family historians face similar tasks and joys. Christmas DNA kit results are appearing as new matches, and the online databases are swelling with new record sets and improved search methods, such as full text search, and updated catalogs. It is a good time to take stock of your research goals, and plan ahead for any research trips. Now is the perfect time to contact the groups, cities, towns, repositories, and genealogy friends in order to make best use of your time and money.  It's spring here in the South King County Genealogical Society too. We have an election of officers coming up soon, and MUST have more candidates! As of this writing, instead of holding an election, the Board must instead plan for our demise or union with another group. A non-profit can't run without offic...

"Doubt" courtesy of Freepik.com Doubt: hidden superpower Doubt and uncertainty are no fun. Our brains prefer confidence. However, listening to doubt can be your superpower IF it helps you stop, evaluate the situation, then  consider alternatives .  As a beginner genealogy researcher, I was not only confident, but ignorant. We don't know what we don't know. I assumed memories of what I had been told about my family were accurate. I've since realized that while no one lied to me, my memories were incomplete and so were the memories of my family members. Unpleasant facts such as divorce and child deaths were never mentioned. No wonder it took me years to untangle even my own recent family, much less more distant relatives and ancestors. The idea of research planning seemed absurd to this beginner. Now I'm looking at doubt and skepticism in a new light as I clean up my sprawling tree. I caused much of the mess years ago by accepting whatever "facts" I f...

2025: What Happened, and a peek into 2026 “Father Time” by Linnaea Mallette: Public Domain license In south King County, Washington, 2025 began with most folks still recovering from a major storm, a "bomb cyclone." Unfortunately, winter storms were punishing at the end of the year as well, with near-record flooding in much of western Washington. However, our society  handled disaster as our ancestors did: with courage, creativity and by working together. We had nine amazing speakers this year and were active weekly in small groups. Volunteers staff monthly Genealogy Help desks in three local libraries, and SKCGS publishes a weekly blog.  2025 Speaker Series January:  Dr. Carol Gorman Friedel "The Invisible Man—Moving Through a Pre-1840 Burned County Brick Wall" February:  Michael Strauss “The Road to Independence: Revolutionary War Research” March:  Amber Oldenburg " Women's Committee of the Council of National Defense Registration Cards: The Largest...

James Wheeler: Free to use. Pitt Meadows, BC.  CanadaCrop Field Under Rainbow and Cloudy Skies at Daytime   Modern Blessing: Public Health   I am so thankful to live now, not 100 years ago. There are tiny figures next to the wife's name in the 1900 and 1910 US census, noting the number of children born and children living.  I feel relief when the numbers are the same; sadness when they are not.  Worse, we often never know the names of those who have died.  This past week I transcribed a long flowery obituary written by a grandchild of Kezia McGowan Husted, and this part touched me:  "Kizia McGowan was born in Wayne county, Ohio, February 18th 1830. Came to Illinois in 1845 and married Lyman Husted, 1847. To this union were born ten children of which four are living , namely: Mrs. Carrie Dudley, Mrs. Mary Cochran, William and James Husted. Six children preceded Grandma to heaven, when they were quite young... her angel children, whose names were: Ve...

©Bizarro Piraro The comic above is funny, but history and our ancestor's stories are not always funny, pleasant, uplifting and inspiring. Life and thus history is full of tragedy and comedy, beauty and horror, and some parts are difficult to face. Survival is not guaranteed, because we are human. My family has endured crime and tragedy; my mother's father was convicted of child rape, and spent time in prison. My dad's only sibling, his little brother, drowned when only 13, and my Grampa Cowan, Donald's daddy, found his body. Terrible tragedy in the lives of both my parents, yet they went on to build a house and a life together. They raised my sister and I in that house, and my mother lived the rest of her life there. I think the security of living in a house they owned was a comfort to her, in contrast to the chaos in which she had been raised.  The reason I've been thinking about telling the whole truth of our families is that there is another a way of thinking abo...

 Time Horizon   Ttime Horizon by   nicola2002f (pixabay.com)   How far do you see into your future? It turns out, not only does that vary widely, but it makes a huge difference in how we live our lives. The same was true of our ancestors, but the reason I'm writing about this is that it governs how we choose to do our work. When I was young, I was interested in knowing more about my family history, but did not have the know-how. These days, many aspects are easier, but it seems like I'm running out of time. And that's OK, because it helps to focus. For more about this, listen to The Best Years of Your Life , part of the Hidden Brain podcast.  So how can I do ALL the THINGS?  I think the best way to focus is to first, listen to my heart. What do I truly want to investigate, do for someone, or even finish up? So it starts with a question, which can then become a plan . It is important to me to write it down, so even if there is inter...

  DID YOU INHERIT A FAMILY BIBLE? Surprises! My parents had an interesting way of getting rid of “things” as they aged. I lived with my family in the Puget Sound area. My parents lived in eastern Washington, so when they came to visit us, it was usually several days, or at least overnight. The first thing I remember “finding” was an unfinished piece of needlepoint that I remembered hanging around my parents’ home for years. I recognized the box as soon as I saw it under the bed in the guest room. The next time I talked with my Mother, I asked her about it, but a funny thing, she knew nothing about what I was talking about. I learned to do needlepoint and finished the piece. My husband refinished an old dressing table bench, which had also come from my parents’  home, and we mounted the needlepoint.   The bench now resides in my son’s home. I did not leave it as a “surprise” for him to find. The next “surprise” I found in my ...