I don’t know about US or world history but I’m a family person, so I’ve always been interested in family history. Possibly because we moved away when I was little & I didn’t get to know any of them? But when we came for visits, I was a bundle of questions. Whatever info I could get out of anybody – mostly my maternal granny – I wrote it down. Plus, when I was grown a paternal aunt gave me a whole book on our family, which was good because I knew the paternal side even less than the maternal.
In 2004 my mom died. One brother & his kids lived in one state. One brother & his kids lived in another. Then I moved off to TX with my kid & left my local brother & his kid home alone. So, I shoved all this info I had online for the whole family to have. That’s all I meant to do.
Instead, putting our info online has been attracting people for at least 17 years. It’s happened as recent as a couple of weeks ago. I had a great uncle who died in WWII & I didn’t even know he existed ’til I was an adult. I can’t remember when I learned he had a son before he died. Somebody who knows the son has reached out to me. The only maternal aunt I can reach, his 1st cousin, still didn’t know he existed. And I had something about him in our tree & on my great uncle’s Find A Grave memorial.
Whatever I meant to do, that’s not how it’s turned out. Instead, I got 17 years of researching & cleaning up messes mostly other people have made at sites like Find A Grave. But I’m not sorry. I wanted stories & boy did I get some doozies over the years. I could & should fill a book with them. I’ve also seen a lot of graves of family I never got to meet. Plus, I bet I could get a degree in at least OK history without even trying.
Between working on my tree & working at Find A Grave I’ve come to know how important it is to have info be complete & correct preferably with legal docs to back it up. Unfortunately, we didn’t keep all the records we do now throughout history. Still, I find what I can via Google, Google books, FamilySearch.org & Find A Grave. Missouri has some death certificates online. Fold3, which I’ve been able to use for free via my library’s site & card, had both Dawes Rolls packets & TX death certificates on their site. Now they’re making it seem like they’re all military, so I don’t know if they still do? But if not, hopefully they turned them over to Ancestry, which I can still use for free via my library’s site & card.
If you’re interested in family history but don’t have the time to research, I’d be happy to do it for you for $10.00/hr. You can pre-pay via PayPal. If you prepay for 10 hours & it only takes me 5 to figure out whatever you want to know they can reverse the charges for the rest. Or I can keep researching info ’til you’ve got the time to take over. Contact me to discuss it further.