Everyone is writing about whether they met their goal for 2011, I could not remember if I had set any…. I checked back on my posts and found that I did not.
What does that mean? It certainly does not mean I did not have any, it means that I had no clue what I wanted to do. When I wrote the posts a year ago, I did not know for sure that I would be retired by now. But I am…..I think forty two years working as a nurse is long enough.
I made a lot of discoveries, most of them by happenstance. I find things when I least expect it, it is that I go to search for an ancestor or something related and come up with something totally different. This has happened the past four years of my research.
The most surprising was my sister and I went to take pictures of my grandparents graves and I found a whole branch of her family. I had no idea that my great grandfathers siblings had moved to the USA.
My mother spoke of her Tante’s but I wrongly assumed that she was speaking of her fathers Aunts in Germany. She also had mention family secrets that I have yet to prove and perhaps I shall never find. What do you do with family scoundrels? I suppose I shall not print what I have heard until proved otherwise…..I could have gotten it mixed up like the information about her Aunts.
That was a great find, wasn't it! Perhaps we should all add "don't assume" into our advice lists...we think we understand things we've been told then find there was an alternate explanation. Happy hunting in 2012 - being retired is great! Doesn't pay as well but leaves you more time for research;-)
ReplyDeleteI like the way you described the fun of discovering things by happenstance. The part of family history research that I most enjoy are the unexpected discoveries. I occasionally reach dead ends--but more frequently I find all sorts of interesting new directions in which to head.
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