Pages

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Top Ten Scary Halloween Stories for Genealogists!



#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!


 -----------------------------

Cite/Link to this post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Top Ten Scary Halloween Stories for Genealogists!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted October 29, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2021/10/top-ten-scary-halloween-stories-for.html: accessed [access date]). 

1 comment:

  1. All tricks, no treats in these scary stories! Haunting ideas. Have a good Halloween.

    ReplyDelete