About 30 years ago, I began gathering information to fill out my first Family History Chart. I knew NOTHING about what I was doing! I made almost all the Rookie mistakes, starting with giving the wives the same last name as their husbands. :( Now I look back and cringe.
I have felt that truthfully, and maybe knowledgeably, I only claim to have been doing genealogy for 25 years. Before then I was only gathering and learning how to become organized and figuring out how to gather and keep information.
As I was caring for my grandmother, Dorothy Schnee Hughes during the last 3 years of her life, I learned for the first time that we had another Uncle, Teddie Hughes. Uncle Teddie had been in the Air Corp, and grandma told me of the day he'd gone into the hospital for what the Drs thought was a stomach ulcer, but when they opened him up his stomach was filled with cancer. Uncle Teddie died three days later at the age of 28, leaving his wife Vivian and two children, Barbara and Eddie.
In the subsequent years I hadn't been able to add much to Grandma Dorothy's story, until yesterday. Here is my Whoopee Moment...
I received a note from Barbara's granddaughter through Ancestry.com's Message Board. She thanked me for creating the Schnee Genealogy, then filled in full names and dates for me about their family. Now I have the correct spelling for Aunt Vivian's maiden name, who she married after the death of Uncle Teddie, and some of their children!
Imagine, praying and searching for 25 years, and carefully compiling those records for others to see, have finally born fruit. I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Now we have family we haven't ever met and they are wanting to get to know us as much as we are wanting to know them!
The next time you begin to wonder if you are wasting your time, that your 'Brick Walls' are insurmountable, remember my story, and just keep gathering data, certificates, names, and stories. One day you will have your own Whoopee Moment.
