Five Things Genealogists Hate to Hear
- At March 28, 2015
- By Phares O'Daffer
- In All Posts, Genealogy
- 1
My first blog post emphasized how fun it is to do genealogy.
But doing genealogy also involves a pretty good-sized serving of frustration.
These stories, on the five things genealogists hate to hear, illustrate this.
Trash Talk
I was whistling a tune as I drove along, happy because I just felt in my bones that this would be a good genealogy day.
I just knew that my relatives in Jacksonville, Illinois–who I had never met– would have the information I needed about my great grandfather David Odaffer, who had divorced his wife and married a younger Jacksonville lady.
If he had blue eyes and blond hair, as my elderly Aunt Grace insisted, it would be one of the greatest “exceptions to the rule” of all times. Didn’t all Odaffers have dark eyes and dark hair, just like my dad? I needed to know more about David, and I needed a photograph!
Arriving in rural Jacksonville, I had a very nice visit with one of David’s sons with his second wife, and his wife. But when I finally got to the nitty-gritty bottom line and asked them about any photos, letters, or documents they might have about David, all my whistling stopped.
In response to my question, the demure farmers wife -In the words that all genealogists hate to hear- said “Oh, we had some of that stuff, but we cleaned out the attic in ’68 and threw it away.”
Can We Communicate With the Dead?
My good friend Stan Clemens graciously sent me a newspaper article about Whitey Odaffer, from Lima Ohio. It was a surprise, because at that time, I didn’t know about the Ohio Odaffers.
Whitey appeared to be an eccentric old pack rat, collecting everything– literally from soup to nuts.
So in a lifetime of collection, he had, the article reported, collected a lot of information about the Odaffer family.
But as I read the article, it became clear that good ole’ Whitey couldn’t pick very much written material about the family from his pile of collectables- it had to be picked from Whitey’s brain!
“I’ve got to talk to this guy,” my little brain voice kept saying, ever louder and louder.
I drove to Lima and found Whitey’s small house, but the windows were boarded up. Maybe Whitey had moved to a retirement home, I surmised, deciding which neighbor’s house to approach.
“I see Whitey isn’t living here anymore,” I said to the little old lady next door, after finally knocking on her door long enough to bring her out. “Can you tell me how I can get in touch with him?”
Uttering the words no genealogist who’s looking for someone who has special information about the family wants to hear, she said, with a sad smile, “That would be pretty hard, He died about three weeks ago.”
Dante’s Inferno
It was in the dog days of August when my 16 yr. old son Eric and I approached Tarleton cemetery near Tarleton, Ohio.
We drove into the cemetery, looking for the graves of Henry and Elizabeth Odaffer, my great great grandparents.
As we parked, Eric jumped out of the car and began shouting “There it is! There it is! It’s Elizabeth’s grave!”
Sure enough, there it was, almost the first grave we saw, and having weathered the 127 years since 1855.
Obviously, David’s grave should be next to it, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even nearby, or even in the cemetery! Was it there once, and then washed away or destroyed?
As we looked for a source of information, almost from behind a gravestone, a small, wizened old man with a flowing tobacco stained beard appeared, grass clippers in hand.
“What can I do for ye?” he queried, not with great enthusiasm. “I’m Reynard Potts, and I take care of this place.”
Excited in anticipation, I told Mr. Potts about the grave we had found, and leaped into the question. “Can you show us the past cemetery records for Tarleton cemetery so we can see if Henry Odaffer was ever buried here?
Striking a pose of great authority, Reynard took all the wind out of our sails as he almost proudly pronounced,
“There’s no way you’ll ever find that information. The fire of 1895 burned the cemetery shed to the ground and destroyed all the records.”
Words that are like scraping fingernails on a chalkboard to the ear of an anticipatory genealogist!
Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya
I went to Decatur, Illinois to specifically find out about two of the Decatur Odaffers.
After much searching, I finally found the house of the Odaffer gentleman who I thought would know the information about his grandfather and brother that I needed to fill in the Decatur Odaffer family tree.
My Odaffer relative lived by himself in the outskirts of Decatur. I soon found his house, and we were sitting on his porch, ready for an informative talk about his relatives.
“Well, George, what can you tell me about your grandfather and your brother? If I can find out about them, the Decatur Odaffer story will be complete”
George moved around a little in his chair, scratched the stubble on his chin, looked a me like I probably shouldn’t have asked, and said…
“I don’t know anything about my grandfather- never saw him. And I haven’t seen my brother for 40 years- no idea where he is.”
Amazing how many people say these words that are bewildering to genealogists. “I don’t know anything about them” (I.e., the people who could be close to them).
Lost and Gone Forever
Early on, in my foray into genealogy, I bought a cheap database designed to keep and display data about my ancestors.
I spent 2 days entering my data, and was proud of where I was headed in terms of keeping good genealogy records.
I was just about done when, lo and behold, on the third day, out of the blue, it crashed!
After much searching for customer support, I called ‘’’the budding company and asked for an expert who could help me retrieve the data.
“Well, said the person on the line, I’m sorry to inform you that we discovered a bug in the software that caused it to crash, and your data can’t be retrieved. So the old software is now out of print. But the revision works just fine! I can send you a copy for $49.95. ”
Not what I wanted to hear!
Conclusion
A lot of difficulty in genealogy, much like life, could be avoided if we didn’t procrastinate.
So if you want to find out about your family, start sooner rather than later.
It will help avoid good genealogical information getting thrown away, burnt is a fire, or informed relatives dying before they get to tell their story.
It may even give you more time to find out about the relative nobody knows, or to find a reliable genealogy computer program!
Larry
Seems like 5 good reasons not to start. which is where I am.