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Question:http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/0...

Anyone else have a story about their research, that you THOUGHT you never would find??
share it to give someone inspiration or hope, or unusual source that the answer turned up in..


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/0...

Anyone else have a story about their research, that you THOUGHT you never would find??
share it to give someone inspiration or hope, or unusual source that the answer turned up in..

My "never give up" story is still in the making. I am trying to find my grandfather on my father's side. My dad never knew his father. He has tried his entire adult life to find him. Now I have taken on the task and am getting no where.

I did find a 1870 census record today that I am not sure anyone else researching that line has found. The reason why is because the original census taker got the last name wrong. I have not seen any other researcher of this line have any 1870 census documentation on this family. The name is supposed to be Vaughan, but the census taker recorded Bond. Sound very similar to each other, so I understand the error. But I knew I had the right family because of where they were living, the mother was widowed (husband killed in Battle of Chancellorsville) and of the 8 other people listed in the home, I recognized about 6 of them as names of kids I knew she had. I compared the ages of the kids on the 1870 census to their known birth dates and in every case, the age was either exactly right, or off only by 1 year. Too coincidental for this to be any other family than the one I was looking for. I search census records very hard. That is the one area I never give up on searching because I know they are all there somewhere......just names were probably mispelled. As a result, I believe I have found several records on several of my family lines that no other researcher has come across or connected to because of the errors, as I have not seen other researchers cite those records. It feels good to think that I may be the first one to find something.

Awesome story! There is hope for my quest yet!

Mmmm, nothing to compare with that story!
(I note the trolls are tromping around again. Nothing better to do guys?)

I have been looking for my ancestry for about 4 yrs now....I knew that the Hammerstein's came from Columbus, Ohio and that my great great grandfather was a committeeman. That's all I knew! It was hard finding him because he went by a nickname, but finally I found a library that had articles on him, and his siblings and parents..marriages etc. One article even had a little sketch of him. Another article showed that he was a fibber because he said that he pioneered Ohio with Daniel Boone and Return Jonathan Meigs, who died before he was born...lol....I have been able to search as far back as 1860 and I am at a standstill but the information that I have found...has brang me great joy!!

Everybody who does this insanity runs into brick walls and piles of rubble, and family trees are often runners of crab-grass in disguise. Perseverance, getting resources, correct methods, optimism and sheer guts get you through.

My story is not as dramatic. The cousins and I wanted to find out why GGGranpa's N.L.White old family photos always showed him sporting crutches. It turned out that he had been shot in the head and shoulder in the Civil War. He was returned in a grave condition; his Wisconsin Calvary friends captured Jefferson Davis two weeks later. He lived a long life, but sported the crutches proudly in every photograph that survived the 19th Century.

I'm back to the 1600's on many lines within a year of research, and it was all due to networking. I made contact with distant cousins, who forwarded FULLY SOURCED trees that I previously thought were impossible to define. I hit local town history sites for old newspaper articles. I hit http://www.books.google.com to find books that my ancestors wrote, or in which they were described. Most importantly, I joined a genealogical society and hung out at state archive outreaches so I could LEARN METHODOLOGY FROM THE MORE EXPERIENCED.

It's a quest: a good find is a thrill, and I've uncovered megabytes of information all by myself that I never thought would be available about hundreds of these people.

I've lots of exploring left to do here. Some ancestors will be lost forever, no doubt. My job is to make that percentage as small as possible. I merely need to improve my research skills.

I have no doubt that there are other great finds I will uncover AND VERIFY with organization, discipline, curiosity, and proper technique. I believe the people in the article used the same dogged determination to solve their mystery.

And yes, Y!A is another resource I'm willing to use, and some of these folks, including you, have been very helpful.

I doubt I will have to dig in the snow. But I would do so if necessary.

Happy hunting to one and all (except the trolls!)...

I hate CNN... anyway, I can't think of any "don't give up" stories related to research.