Researchers: Thank You!

 

“If at first you don’t succeed, search, search again. That is why we call it re-search.” GenealogyBank.com

I remember back in the early 1990s, personal computers allowed genealogists and family history enthusiasts to communicate by email. You still had to physically go to an archives or family history library, but you could come home and let others know what you had found by typing out long emails. Getting an email from someone at Prodigy.com or AOL.com could open up a whole new family line you never knew about! To see what was in a will, you actually had to write to the state archives and pay money requesting a will that you had to wait to arrive in the mail and hope that it was a will for someone in your family tree (and not a brother or cousin)!

As PC use expanded, websites like RootsWeb devoted to nothing but posts about surname inquiries or people listing everything they knew about a surname became popular. It was about 1996, the year my daughter was born, that online genealogy really began to make its presence felt in my family. My mother, Kay Rockett, was using WEBTV and learned hotmail so she could post her family history findings at www.oocities.org/~kayrockett/ (that was GeoCities, sort of a precursor to social media).

Turns out, my mother printed out every single email she got. She put it in a folder with the surname written on it, but she never went through the papers at a later date. So, now I’ve got these folders in a trunk, and I think it’s time to go through them!

So, move over Ancestry, FamilySearch, WikiTree, Geni, MyHeritage, etc. Here’s to all of the “early pioneers” who spent many, many tireless hours researching family histories through reading, writing, using typewriters, talking on landline phones, driving to archives and cemeteries and family history libraries, and spending money for postage and copies and hotel rooms (overnight travel) just to bring you 2 or 3 lines of accurate information about 1 ancestor!

 This is a work in progress that will be updated as I go through each of the above surname folders!

Littler

Bev Barnes

Mr. And Mrs. Don Day

Daniel Rose

Ross

Kathleen R. Edwards

Dwaine Stoddard 

Sharp

Francie L. Lane - in 2014 published a four-volume set on her Martin family history

Greg Sharp

Whitsett

Debra Slater Garner

Karolyn Jones

Francie L. Lane - in 2014 published a four-volume set on her Martin family history

Will Moneymaker

Sharon Neill

Larry Noah

Louise Tillman Overton (1934-2020)

Kathy Whitsett

Debbie Wilson