#10 You can’t join DAR because that Revolutionary War ancestor Major Daniel Bollman was really a Hessian soldier.
#9 The family cemetery you've been looking for this past decade was just investigated by “Ghost Hunters” on TV.
#8 That Mayflower lineage document from 2nd Cousin Horace is really just a 1972 receipt from the moving company.
#7 Great Aunt Hilda, who you have avoided interviewing, just passed away and you never got the story of her passage through Ellis Island.
#6 That illustrious ancestor who, according to a 1912 compiled genealogy book, “occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution” was really a convict sent to the electric chair.
#5 You finally arrange a visit with a professional genealogist at NEHGS and they kindly refute your great grandparent’s lineage, leaving you back at square one on that branch of the family.
#4 You finally find that your 3rd great grandfather, David Burham who married Dorothy Burnham, had a mother named Judith Burnham and her mother was Martha Burnham.
#3 A sudden natural disaster destroys your computer, floods your paper files, and burns your family photo albums.
#2 Your mother confesses about the “milkman”, making 50% of your family tree moot.
#1 Your Irish grandfather’s y-DNA test comes back as Haplogroup H
Remedy:
Some of the situations above are avoidable. Have a disaster plan for your files, interview those elderly relatives NOW, and double check your research.
Don't worry! Sometimes you have to lop off a branch of your family tree and rebuild all over again. Often the new branch will be much more interesting than the original
Happy Halloween!
All tricks, no treats in these scary stories! Haunting ideas. Have a good Halloween.
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