What I would have liked to know as a newbie

I did a lot of genealogy before I had any idea that there were such things as standards, national conferences, an Association of Professional Genealogists, or a Board for the Certification of Genealogists. These things all dawned on me once I got more serious -- and as my previous job, career, and occupation started dissolving.

I love being in genealogy as a business and as a profession. But there are still a few things that I would be happy to have learned sooner:

(1) Most professional genealogists do not rely exclusively on genealogy-based income to support themselves and their families.

(2) Aside from Utah, which is a special case, it helps to be farther east. Pennsylvania has more decades of researchable genealogy than Indiana, just as Indiana has more than Wyoming.

(3) Not all specialties are created equal. Some make better business models than others.

(4) A professional -- whether in terms of standards or doing work for money -- needs to be prepared for some bumps. We don't always know what we don't know; I sure didn't. The process is more fun for those who can take some correction, and who can enjoy both learning new things and un-learning some old ones. (And if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I think genealogy's problem is that people don't criticize one another enough or in the right ways.)

(5) It helps to have some family background or comfort level with running a business. I did not.



Harold Henderson, "What I would have liked to know as a newbie," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Everyone an "expert"?

A friend reminded me to read a couple of interesting opinion posts outside the field of genealogy:

"The Death of Expertise" by Tom Nichols, and

"No, You're Not Entitled to Your Opinion," by Patrick Stokes.

Both writers are dismayed at the popular notion that any ignorant opinion is as good as a well-informed one. Neither draws much on history, but it is well to remember that the US was founded on a healthy skepticism of authority, and the ensuing presidency of Andrew Jackson intensified this American characteristic.

But like all good things mistrust of authority can be carried too far. A politician who uses her position of authority to assert without evidence that history supports her position (or that she can see Russia from her house) may indeed deserve skepticism. Someone who played a dad on TV and who now shills for a finance company deserves something stronger than skepticism.

Many of us come to genealogy thinking that we're already experts. Most of us learn that we're not, and then proceed to learn what we need to know. At least genealogy has a clear set of standards that anyone can read and understand. Those who choose not to follow them will still be judged by them.

We're not all experts, and we don't have to be. We do need the wit to seek our genealogy from those who follow standards, our business news from the Wall Street Journal, our climate science from actual climate scientists, and so forth -- not trying to make one source do for all. Common sense, right?



Harold Henderson, "Everyone an 'expert'? ," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Is the story everything in genealogy?

Is it true that in genealogy the story is everything?

Yes -- in a way, up to a point.

I totally believe in stories, especially since they were at the core of my previous (journalistic) life. But loving and seeking family stories is not a good excuse to evade research and proof, or to disregard standards. Two thoughts:

(1) The story is not much good if it's attached to the wrong person or the wrong family. My grandfather thought that his maternal grandfather had watched and waited for a tax sale and bought a nice farm at a good price that way. I've never found any evidence that this happened (although I'm not done looking), but I have found evidence that his paternal great-grandfather did just that, probably more than once.

(2) Often hard-core research in property and probate and more obscure records can reveal stories no one remembers today. I found one while working on a case study for my BCG certification portfolio. I was struggling to trace a family headed by an agricultural laborer who owned no land. I thought they were in Marshall County, Indiana, and I worked all the records I could find and found only three traces there: a census entry, an entry in a book of chattel mortgages, and a brief court record. He had to borrow $90, and to secure the loan he put up "one dark brown medium sized horse, having small head and small ears, and supposed to be eight years old in the spring of 1881. Name of said horse is Frank." The court record came when he couldn't repay the loan and had to forfeit Frank, as well as a set of work harnesses and a wagon. (The story didn't contribute to the solving of that case, but it's burned into my memory even though I'm no relation to that family.)

Standards don't require anyone to suppress stories that are dubious or even proven false. Just be clear about what they are and are not. In fact it may be useful to preserve them. Sometimes a false story or a false piece of information conveys a nugget of truth either in the way it is told, or the kind of mistake it makes, or when it is correlated with documentary evidence. But that's a story for another day . . .


Harold Henderson, "Is the story everything in genealogy? ," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 January 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during November.

I'm happy to see that #1 ran well ahead of the pack: "Cut-and-paste genealogists are free to spread unsubstantiated, dubious, false, or absurd information -- and will remain free to do so. We can build however we want. But what we can't do is build poorly, glory in it, and expect respect from those who know better."

1. Misteaks (November 24)

2. A Day in the Life: Probate (November 29)

3. Sowing Primary and Secondary Confusion (November 14)

4. We'll Always Need Advanced Genealogy Education (November 2)

5. Lost Causes in NGS Magazine (November 6)


Least viewed:

Disasters Are Part of Genealogy, Too (November 1)


Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Perfectionism: Is the Best the Enemy?

Ideally, every genealogical article would cite every assertion of fact (that is not common knowledge) to an original source or to a proof argument resting on original-source clues. And as our perspective on genealogy broadens into family history and microhistory, the number of possible facts to add in and enrich the story grows exponentially. If you're a perfectionist, those two things alone may keep you from ever finishing any piece of writing, let alone publishing it.

Obviously a top-ranked genealogy periodical should insist on this, and several do. But most genealogy publications are not in the top 1%. And not all genealogy articles need to hold to this standard.

It's not easy to say this without appearing to give license to those who sneer at standards in the first place. I do not believe that genealogists should just publish anything they feel like because they feel like it. We should all try to do the best we can -- but not to the point of doing nothing at all (which is where perfectionism is headed).

My notion of how to resolve this paradox is to insist on transparency. Know the standards; know when and where you're short of them; and let your readers know that you know. Cite the sources you have and explain their shortcomings and where better ones might be found. Don't publish unsourced stuff without some kind of explanation, for instance: "This is a systematic account of what Grandma said about the family, for future reference; I do not claim she was right about everything and my readers should not either." (My own grandma was a saint but she was also way wrong about certain genealogical facts.)

It would of course be nice to do the article that thoroughly tests Grandma's assertions (actually I'm working on one of those right now). But getting those assertions out there, properly qualified, for future evaluation, would also be one step toward that desirable end point. And of course good editors play an important role in promoting standards (when possible) and transparency (in all cases).




Harold Henderson, "Perfectionism: Is the Best the Enemy?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

What Does It Mean to Be "Out of Date"?

In an interesting discussion a while back on the Transitional Genealogists Forum, the question arose whether a certain genealogical classic -- the third (2000) edition of Val D. Greenwood's The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy -- is out of date and hence requires revision.

(1) Some argued it's out of date because of the importance of the internet in conducting research today.

(2) Others argued that it is not out of date because the basic research approaches it gives, and the record types themselves, have not changed just because we can sometimes access records in a new medium.

I would suggest both sides are right but are talking past each other because group 1 views the question from close up, while group 2  views the question from farther away.

On a daily basis, we need to know the most efficient way to get to the records we need -- indexes as necessary, and original records or good images thereof in the end. The means of access are changing daily. The research on my recently published William Berry article would have been done quite differently if FamilySearch had happened to put up 8 million New York property records three or four years ago instead of this week! Now I don't have to drive to Belmont, New York, to look at the crucial deeds. Greenwood has nothing to tell me about how to get at New York deeds, and if a 4th edition tried to do so, it would quickly become outdated too.

On a longer view, though, the basic techniques of research once we get hold of the records have not changed since Greenwood last wrote. (Even DNA requires corroboration and fits very well into the Genealogical Proof Standard. What it does require of today's genealogists is far more knowledge of biology and statistics than many of us ever expected. A new Greenwood could use a chapter on that.) We still need to understand that no single record is automatically correct or even trustworthy; they all need corroboration from other independently created records if we can possibly find them. We still need to understand how to analyze a single record and correlate it with other types. From this point of view 2013 looks very much like 1993 -- or, for that matter, 1893.

Each viewpoint is valid from its perspective, but neither perspective is complete.

Those who know the internet well need not be seduced into thinking that it has changed basic genealogical research standards. It hasn't.

Those who grew up as genealogists without the internet need not be seduced into thinking that they don't need to use it in practical everyday record retrieval. They do.

We can all get along and learn from each other.



Harold Henderson, "What Does It Mean to Be 'Out of Date'?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Misteaks

We all make mistakes . . . constantly. In my own lives, I have:

* constructed skylights that leaked persistently,

* nailed up clapboards on a chicken house backwards, so that they conducted water into the wall instead of away from it,

* publicly expressed bewilderment as to why anyone would cite the 1880 census any differently from the 1850, and

* submitted a writing contest entry about a three-generation family, in which I cited no probates or property records.

The question is not whether we're going to make mistakes. That's a given. But we have a choice of what we do afterwards.

Option 1: We can hug our mistakes to ourselves, and lash out at anyone who points out, even in a very general way, that they are mistakes.

Option 2: We can resolve to do better (or in my case, to take up something other than carpentry!) and learn from the correction.

The other day a fellow genealogist wrote an exasperated post complaining about "drive-by genealogists" and how much unsubstantiated genealogical information is posted on line. Without naming names or web sites, she outlined some of the basic standards of evaluating evidence. She did note that "a researcher might find a document that says a couple married on a specific date. That researcher may tell others that this 'proves' the marriage. In fact, it isn't proof, but it is evidence of the marriage and needs a bit more work."

A number of other genealogists responded by choosing Option 2 and complaining about her complaint! Some called it elitist. Some said they had no time for source citations. One commenter sarcastically expressed surprise that a document didn't prove a marriage. (It doesn't. One document by itself doesn't prove anything, because any document can be wrong. Proof comes from multiple sources that corroborate each other. Check it out here for starters.)

There are no carpentry police, at least not out in the country. There are no genealogy police, and there never will be (although the original poster did kind of wish for some).

But there are plenty of people who can tell good from bad. It would not be elitist for others to snicker at my misbuilt chicken house, because it really did not protect the structure from the elements. Similarly, it is not elitist to point out that our family and other readers won't believe our family tree when it lacks a sound foundation. Of course there are better and worse ways to make this point. Good teachers and responsible genealogists will find ways to do it in a kind and encouraging manner. But whether stated well or badly, it remains a fact.

Cut-and-paste genealogists are free to spread unsubstantiated, dubious, false, or absurd information -- and will remain free to do so. We can build however we want. But what we can't do is build poorly, glory in it, and expect respect from those who know better.



Sharon Tate Moody, "Drive-by genealogists should learn a few rules," Tampa Bay Online, posted 18 November 2012 (http://www2.tbo.com/lifestyles/life/2012/nov/18/banewso8-drive-by-genealogists-should-learn-a-few-ar-567094/  : accessed 23 November 2012).
 

Harold Henderson, "Misteaks," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]


Photo credit: garryknight's photostream at Flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/3813921093/ : accessed 23 November 2012), per Creative Commons.