Amy Johnson Crow Has A Great New Idea About Researching Our Ancestors

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I had the chance to check out a few bloggers this week.  I really like Amy Johnson Crow as I mentioned last week.  She is a very practical teacher and a good writer.

' A Surprising Skill for Genealogy "If we had to list the skills or traits necessary to be a good genealogist (defining "good" however you want), we would probably include things like attention to detail, curiosity, and persistence. There is one I would like to add: The willingness to be surprised. I don't mean that just in the sense of DNA, though it is certainly true. If you're not willing to be surprised with what you find, don't take a DNA test. We need to be willing to be surprised in the records we find and what we discover in them. We need to be willing to be surprised that our preconceived notions of "what life was like back then" might not match the reality. We need to be open to the possibility that a couple's first child might have been, shall we say, "premature." We need to be willing to be surprised when it turns out that great-great-grandpa's second wife was the "boarder" who lived with them before the first wife's death. We need to be willing to be surprised when we've built a narrative in our minds that our ancestors were poor, illiterate farmers... and then discover a will that specifies that the daughters be taught to read and write. We need to be willing to be surprised when we read a Civil War pension file that says, "The soldier was married 7 times up to this point, as far as known." (Yes, that's been a fun file to work through!) When we are surprised, we must then be willing to investigate further and not just discount what we have found. We need to be open to the reality that our ancestors were real people who did real things, some of which are going to surprise us.  What surprising things have you found?" ***************************************************************** If you have found this to be a fun and interesting post you may wish to follow Amy Johnson Crow and sign up for her newsletter.  She'll be teaching at Rootstech as well.