10 Geneology Taglines and Tales

Yes, there is humor to be found in genealogy.  The 10 tantalizing taglines below can be found in various places, with no indication of who first said them.  So I apologize for not being able to give credit to the originators, but thank them for glimpsing humor in genealogy and passing it on.

Enjoy the taglines, and the little tale, or observation about genealogy that comes with each one.

Tagline 1:  Genealogy research — what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.

I have alluded to the possibility that I am a “stumbleologist” rather than a “genealogist.”  Often, I have just searched and searched and finally stumbled onto something good.  Like just happening to talk to an old guy in a library in Clear Spring, MD, who told my son Eric and I that John Odoerfer worked on the nearby John Mason Farms (Montpelier Estate, right), opening up a wealth of information about our ancestor.

Tagline 2:  To a genealogist, everything is relative.

What a treasure trove of information you can get from talking to a relative.  When I first started looking for my family tree, it was the photos, letters, and newspaper clippings in my Aunt Grace’s attic, along with her memories, that got me started.  I did get a little suspicious, however, when Aunt Grace (left) told me that my great grandfather David had blond hair and blue eyes, given that all the other Odaffers I knew were black hair and brown eyed wonders.

Tagline 3:  So many relatives, so little time.

The Odaffer family tree in this website contains over 1,200 relatives.  And I am sure that just scratches the surface —  thousands more in Germany, way back.  And there are probably many more, uncharted in the United States.  It is a work in progress – like a significant mountain, you just climb it because it is there.

Tagline 4:  Genealogy — chasing your own tale.

Sure, a genealogist really wonders how he or she got here.  There is a story out there, and all the details of the story will never be found.  Now it is a short tale, but gradually getting longer. It is a bushy tale, with lots of strands.  Ah, the satisfaction of grooming that tale!

Tagline 5:  Cemetery — a marble orchard not to be taken for granite.

Genealogists spend a lot of time in cemeteries, and even looking for cemeteries.  After searching a while, I went out on a blustery, cold winter day to find an old, forgotten country cemetery near Monticello, IL (right), that had a lot of my relatives buried in it. Too cold to be doing it at all, I photographed the stones, and recorded the names.

Two years later, I returned to re-look at that cemetery.  It was totally gone! Luckily, people who cared found the stones, vandalized, down by and in a nearby creek, and restored the cemetery as best they could.

Tagline 6:  That’s strange; half my ancestors are women.

We sometimes, unfortunately, forget that it takes two, a man and a woman, to produce a descendant.  So it is not strange at all that half of my ancestors are women.  But largely because of strange traditions and biases, as well as simply the ease of doing it because the male name doesn’t usually get changed,  it is conventional to pay more attention to the male ancestors than to the women.  But I am also working on my mother’s side of the family.

Tagline 7:  Every family tree has some sap in it.

When my great grandfather David left his wife of many years to marry a much younger woman, I though a bit of a sap had been found.  However, as often is the case, there were two sides to the story, which muddied his candidacy for being a sap.  However, there are always plenty of saps to go around in a family tree.

Tagline 8:  Genealogists never lose their jobs; they just go to another branch.

I was pretty self satisfied with my classification of the Odaffers: the Illinois Branch, the Indiana Branch, the Minnesota Branch, and the Kansas Branch. I had determined that the original Odaffers in Ohio had all migrated westward to form these Branches. It wasn’t until a friend, Stan Clemens, sent me a newspaper article about Whitey Odaffer in Lima, Ohio, that I discovered a currently existing Ohio Branch, and went to work on it.

Tagline 9:  My ancestors are hiding in a witness protection program.

I have tried to find out what happened to Maria Magdalena, Johann Wolfgang’s wife from Germany.   No matter how hard I try, I can’t find a record of her death, nor the place where she was buried. I have contacted the church she probably attended, and they can find nothing.  If I didn’t have her birth record from the church, I would wonder if she ever existed.  Witness protection program, indeed!

Tagline 10:  Genealogists live in the past lane.

No doubt about it.  I have spent a lot of time since 1955 thinking about the past. From a search for ancestors living in Germany in 1560 to a search to solve some cold cases still open today, it has been an exciting journey —  and always in the “past lane.”