Madness Monday - January 25, 2009

Here lately, I’ve been getting a strange number of odd requests from blog readers regarding my blog. And while I can say I am humbly grateful to know somebody is reading my blog(s), and I’m not speaking to myself all the time, it is a little maddening at some of the requests I have been getting. Let me share just two of these with you.


“January 5, 2010 – “I saw where you wrote about my grandpa. He was married to my great-great-grandma. Can you tell me more about her?”

That was it! No mention of either individual’s names. Nor the writers name! Let me address this issue. First of all – re-read that question. Do you see it? Grandpa was married to “great-great-grandma” [no that’s not a typo on my part, I simply copied and pasted the original email here].

Second no names for either grandpa or great-great-grandma. If other researchers are anything at all like me…and I hardly presume to put myself in the same category with some of the elite company I happen to read about… I write about dozens of individuals each week. Both my own research and that I do for clients. I sometimes mention clients’ research in my blogging [with all names, places, etc. changed to protect my clients privacy], but only in passing [ie: I found a record I was searching for – this is how I did it; I was surprised to see mention of this in a record I located; etc.] So, to have me remember what, or who, I have written about without any reference, such as even the date I wrote about this individual, well, you get my drift.

It’s maddening!

Here’s another:

“December 7, 2009 – Helo, I saw where you mentioned my grandpa in an article on the computer. I think you got his wife wrong. He wasn’t married to that woman. My grandpa was married to my grandma, and I can prove it!”

Okay, this person actually did go on and mention the date the blog post appeared, and her grandpa’s name. I do apologize to her. Because, the person I mentioned in the blog post was my own grandfather as well. I mentioned the three children he’d had with my grandmother.

You see, the “grandpa” she was referring to was actually her “great-great-grandfather”. Yep. She was descended from my grandfather all right. But from his second wife. Not his first, nor his third [my grandmother]. What the reader did not know, was that her great-great-grandfather had been married three times. She thought he’d only been married the once. So, I do apologize that in my nine years of attempting to locate all of his descendants [from the whole group of 15 children he’d fathered over a 40 year time span] that I somehow had missed this reader, and had not introduced her to the man he really was [I have since remedied that situation]. But the maddening thing I am illustrating here, is that I get these kinds of letter, like this “how dare you say this!” from individuals who haven’t a clue about the reality!

Of course, in all honesty, I am fairly new to the world of blogging [I won’t have my second anniversary until June of this year], so these kinds of comments are new for me. And I was prepared for different kinds of barbs and unflattering comment. What I have been unprepared for are those individuals who comment with lack of intelligent knowledge on the subject they are arguing about!

As my grandpa Dreher used to say, “Don’t go into battle unarmed”.

If you see me posting something regarding any specific individual here, be prepared if you want to “argue”. I’ve done my homework!