Saturday, June 4, 2011

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - If I Knew Then...

From Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings:

Greetings, genea-philes. it's SATURDAY NIGHT - time for more GENEALOGY FUN!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  On GeneaBloggers Radio last night (www.blogtalkradio.com/geneabloggers/) the discussion turned to regrets that we all have about our genealogy and family history experiences.  Someone said "If I knew then, what I know now, I would have..." I thought that it would make a good SNGF topic, and it may be a general topic on a future GeneaBloggers Radio show.

2)  Tell us about your "If I knew then what I know now, I would have..." regret in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or note.

If I knew then, what I know now, I would have...
  1. Not missed my opportunity to meet and interview Sugar Powell, a 99-year-old lady down in Johnson County who actually had known my paternal grandfather, Lusion Tapley... who died in 1935!  I waited too long, and Mrs. Powell passed away suddenly at age 100!
  2. I, too, would have entered my source citations as I went along.  Once I reached the point in my research that many times I would see a fact in my software program, wonder where I got said fact, and then realize that I had not entered a source citation for that fact, then I realized how badly I had messed up.  Now it is a VERY slow process to enter citations for the thousands of facts I have in my family tree.  
  3. I would have asked my father and my uncle Hugh (Dorsey) more questions while they were still here.  There are many, many days that I say to myself, "I wish I had asked Daddy about THAT," or "I wonder when Uncle Hugh did THAT."  Missed opportunities... 
As Oprah says, "When you know better, you do better."  I continue to try to learn better.

1 comment:

  1. I would agree with all of those. Unfortunately I have a mom and aunt and uncle that don't respond to emails very well when I ask questions. The aunt and uncle live in Hawaii so the time difference make it's difficult to call most times. I'll have to do something about that though. My goal this year is to have my mom's brother agree to a DNA test. He's the last Male brown in our family.

    Thanks for the great post, Liz!

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