Big Mistake
Back in 2013 when I was really starting to delve into family history, I felt compelled to find photos of my ancestors. I asked my mom and both of my brothers if they had any photos of our grandparents and great-grands. I had some of our grandparents, but just a very few of one line of their parents. Well, turned out my brother Jim did have some. And the people were identified on the back of the photos! I was so excited. So between what our mom and my brother Jim had, I now had great photos of the four grandparents, plus all our great grandparents except for one.
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| George Akin Sherrill my great grandfather born 1835 Cumberland County, TN My dad's maternal grandfather |
After seeing the photos, I now knew I had to find a way to share them with the rest of our family, kids, and grandkids so they could be not only be preserved, but could easily shared and passed down. I could digitize them, put them on a flash drive, and share them that way. Or I could just scan and email the photos. But I wanted something more permanent and yet easily accessible. I know many of my flash drives are in a drawer and kind of forgotten. Everyone knows how that goes! I wanted something that they could hold in their hands and that could be passed down too. I knew I had to create a book.
Gradually I developed an idea of what the book would encompass. It would be some select photos of my mom and dad, their parents and grandparents. And I would include a few lines of information about each photo, along with some basic information of each one, such as their birth, marriage, where they lived, etc and any personal memories and impressions I had of them.
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| James Nathan Hinch and Emily Harris Hinch My dad's paternal grandparents |
Of course, writing about our parents and our grandparents was relatively easy. I had known them all, and had most of the facts about their lives. But the great grandparents were another story altogether. I really didn’t know a whole lot of things I could include in my little write-ups for them. So I had to resort to ancestry.com to provide enough information to fill up some space.
I was fairly new to Ancestry and family history research back then, and I made at least two big rookie mistakes in my research. And of course I didn’t find the mistakes until long after I had the books printed and sent out to family.
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| James Alonzo Harley and Catherine "Kate" Landis Harley |
The first mistake I made was relying on other peoples’ family trees as gospel. I was a newbie, and also in a time crunch, because I needed to get the book done so it could be uploaded and printed. I came to realize later that the tree I was using as a source had duplicated names of children from two different spouses. This resulted in me stating that this couple had 9 children instead of 5. Whoops, but not a huge whoops.
My second mistake was kind of a doozie (at least to me). I didn’t realize how similar (or even the same) names could be. My second great grandfather was George Akin Sherrill, and I thought I had found that he had fought in the Civil War as a private in Turney’s 1st Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry. The person listed in the source said George A. Sherrill of Coffee County, Tennessee. Coffee County was close to Cumberland county, so I thought it was the same person. But about one year later, I realized that the person that served in the Civil War was George Alpha Sherrill - a totally different person. “My” 2x great grandfather George Akin Sherrill never served in the Civil War.
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| John Koetzle and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Koetzle My Mom's maternal grandparents |
So what should I do now, since I had found these errors a long time after I had gifted these books to family. I ended up writing a correction sheet of sorts, and asked that they put it in their copy of the book. That was about all I could do.
For the few books I had left, I actually just crossed out the mistakes and wrote in the corrections that needed to be made. And I asked my cousin Gordon (who also does family history in that region of Tennessee) if he thought any libraries in the area might like one of my books. I was concerned about the hand-written corrections I had made, and he said not to worry about that. Just send him the books and he would give them to libraries and archives in the area. So that’s what I did.
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| My mom Dot and her mom at the beach in 1925 Atlantic City 100 years ago !! |
Interestingly, a few years later when I was visiting the Crossville TN Archives, I was searching for a photo of that one great grandparent I did not have a photo of. They searched their indices to help me, and one of the books they brought out was my book, the one I had created and had donated to them. I was very impressed that they had actually indexed all the names in my book. (I'm still searching for her photo)
Looking back on this first book, I remember I was quite upset with myself that I had made these mistakes in my first attempt at sharing our family history. (Heck, there are probably a mistake or two in this post.) But now I can say that these mistakes taught me some valuable lessons and helped me build my skills as a researcher. And when I look back at this 24 page book I created 12 years ago, I see I actually did meet my goals, which were to share these family history photos with my family and also to pique the curiosity in a few of the younger generations about their histories and maybe even to pick up the family history bug!
Included here just a few of the 45 photos that are in this first book.
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| My dad Roscoe at School of Pharmacy Univ of TN early 1930's |