dianaschnuth

The genealogical research show “Who Do You Think You Are?” premiered tonight at 8pm on NBC. I was tipped off about its existence not only by marketing e-mails from Ancestry.com, but also by the author of the companion book, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, via Twitter.

On Megan’s Facebook fan page, she posted a poll: “Grade the opening episode of ‘Who Do you Think You Are?'” I rated it a B, and left the following comment:

There were very few things that rubbed me the wrong way about this episode; mostly, I enjoyed it.

First: I was always taught that the family name or surname is capitalized, not the given name. If the show is trying to encourage non-genealogists to start researching, the graphics should have reflected standard notation. (Unless I learned wrong.)

Second: I’m wondering if the entire series will be focused on finding “famous” or “influential” people in the subjects’ lineages. As a standard Heinz 57 American myself, I have no such expectation, and have only ever found one mildly notable person in my line. Of course, if they didn’t find someone interesting, and only found Average Joe Farmer back for generations, I suppose that wouldn’t make good television.

Third: Would a library really permit a patron to view an original document without gloves, and to point to it with a pencil tip while reading?

Apart from these small issues, I LOVED the show. I live in Ohio, and much of my family is from the Cincinnati area, so that was a pleasant surprise. I also appreciated the personal nature of the research, really getting into who these people were. It’s so easy sometimes to define our ancestors by their dates (hatched, matched, and dispatched), and the suspense of what happened to each ancestor, while sometimes excessive, was good television.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the upcoming episodes! My own research has been sitting dormant for years; I expect that this will help rekindle my interest.

That said, I’ve already set my What’s On TV? iPhone app to remind me of next Friday’s episode. I’m also seriously considering making Friday night genealogy night.

Piecing together the lives of my ancestors is a big part of the joy I find in genealogy. I request death certificates, look at census records, find whatever data I can, and try to interpolate the details that would make these people real. Look at the dates, the events, the people who are suddenly conspicuously absent, and try to imagine what their lives were like, how they interacted with one another, how their lives were so different from ours.

But sometimes, in my zeal to track my lineage to the Old World, to piece together lives lived centuries ago, I skip past the more recent history.

Ordering a death certificate for a family member who has recently died… it’s an awkward and melancholy situation for me. It seems almost the opposite of what I’ve been trying to accomplish with my more distant ancestors; seeing someone you knew, someone you loved, summarized in dates and places and a cause of death — it’s rough. I’ve done it for my Memaw and my Granny, and it was strange and sad, but now I’m feeling even more awkward about doing it for Aaron’s family. Specifically, his Grammie (d. 2008) and his mother (d. 1992).

I feel like it’s important to have the documentation, even though it won’t tell me anything I don’t already know (or so I assume). Still, though, to see two very real lives boiled down to their endgame data — the thought of opening that envelope from the Ohio Department of Health is suddenly more sad, awkward, and uncomfortable than I’ve ever considered it before.

Postscript – As I was editing this entry, the song 100 Years by Five For Fighting shuffled up on my iTunes.

“Halftime goes by / Suddenly you’re wise / Another blink of an eye / 67 is gone / The sun is getting high / We’re moving on… “

According to my Research Log — which, incidentally, I nearly forgot even existed — I haven’t sent out any research requests since September of 2006. That’s over three years that my genealogy research has been sitting dormant.

I spent the evening going though our distant cousin’s research, comparing it to the census records I’d found online last night (and previously), and inputting some (but not all) of the information on the descendant report he sent. I hesitate to include another researcher’s information in my database without proof of documentation, since not all information sources are created equal. Still, when the data dovetails well enough with something I’ve already found elsewhere, I have no problem with including it… although I do make it my goal to get primary documentation for all of my dates and places and whatnot.

Tonight, I wrote a check to the Social Security Administration to get copies of the Social Security applications for Aaron’s Grandpa and Grandma Schnuth, and his Uncle Tom. I probably don’t really need Tom’s info, but I figured that the info was available, and I was requesting it for other family members, anyway, so I may as well pony up the extra cash to make my research more complete.

(The SS-5 includes a good amount of juicy details for the genealogist, including the individual’s name at the time of application, maiden name, mailing address, date and place of birth, father’s and mother’s names, race, gender, and employer — all written down by the person him/herself. It’s hard to get much more of a primary source than straight from the horse’s mouth.)

My goal is to fill in all the blanks in my research, now that I’ve gotten back one more generation via census records (and the research of others). I’m very close to making another generational connection, but it’s around the missing 1890 census… so I’ll focus on completeness before I try grasping at straws to get back one more generation.

My right hand is recovering from that peculiar hand cramp that comes from writing the word “Pennsylvania” about 20 times in a row — under “Place of birth of this person,” “Place of birth of Father of this person,” and “Place of birth of Mother of this person” for a family of eight in the 1900 U.S. Census. I could use ditto marks or arrows, sure, but that would make me a lax researcher, and we can’t have that.

I’m just now really digging into the data we received from a distant cousin of Aaron’s, back in January. If I thought that researching a relatively common name like Cook was bad (which it really isn’t, until people disappear and elope), I had no idea how challenging Schnuth research could be. Schnuth is such an uncommon name that there’s a good side and a bad side to researching it. The good: If two Schnuth families are living close to each other, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that they’re related. The bad: “Schnuth” gets misinterpreted as “Smith” (or misspelled as “Snuth”) so often that it totally offsets the awesome digital advances of the last 20 years of genealogy research (i.e. sitting at home, searching census indices in my jammies, versus spending an afternoon at the county library).

I’ve only just started double-checking the connection between Peter SCHNUTH (b. 1861) and Aaron’s great-grandfather James (b. ca. 1890/91), and I’ve found other branches of the family living in Pennsylvania that I just couldn’t resist documenting right away, before I forgot about them.

I get so caught up in research — connecting the dots, fitting the pieces together, drawing correlations — that it’s easy to let time slip by. Alas, I have training to attend at work tomorrow, so I need to get to bed so I can be fresh-faced and ready to go tomorrow morning. No marathon internet genealogy sessions like I used to do in my dorm room, years ago. Sigh.