Like a good genealogist I began entering the information to prove into my database. I'm always hesitant to use GEDCOM files I find online. I'm just a little overly cautious, so I choose to re-enter the information manually. It's more time consuming but it also allows me to get to know each and every person I enter so I can usually remember one or two things about each person I add, plus I can verify the information I add. In my opinion, those reasons alone balance out the time and effort it takes to enter the information manually.
I spent hours each day on my time off looking at different family trees on Ancestry, checking source documents and adding names to the family file. D1 thought the amount of time I spent doing genealogy over Christmas break was pretty humorous and he began to joke about it with his family. It's all good though, because I got the last laugh. I made it back to his 10th great grandfather and began entering the information and was surprised to get the following error message from Family Tree Maker:
Whaaaaa????? What was this?? This was an error message I'd never received before! No, there was no way we shared an ancestor. I was sure I'd made a mistake in my entry of individuals. So I checked the list of children for each Caleb and Hannah Knapp...and they matched. To the name, date and place of each event listed for each child. So I checked the source documentation to make sure these were the correct connections. And they were. Unbelievably, my husband and I share a common relative from the mid-1600s! My 8th great grandfather was his 10th great grandfather. I couldn't help it, I started to laugh. Poor D1 didn't really find as much humor in it as I did. He just didn't get why it was so funny, but it was hilarious for me. The maternal unit thought it was pretty funny and dear brother thought it was pretty funny, so maybe it's a genealogy humor thing.
I haven't done any research into the Knapp side of my family but after I told the maternal unit about my discovery and the possibilities of additional Daughters of the American Revolution patriots, she mentioned she had heard they were a pretty large and prominent family in early American history. I'm having a very hard time focusing on just one genealogy project right now, LOL. I want so badly to start working on supplemental patriots for DAR, even though I haven't even received notification of acceptance of my initial DAR paperwork. On the other hand I really want to see what else I can find on D1's family. His 2nd great grandfather died in France during World War I and is buried in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. I definitely want to look into him a little more and see what I can find out from the National World War I Museum's research center. Then there's the rumored Native American connection in D1's family, the woman who lived in the dugout that my mother-in-law remembers, and the part of the family my mother-in-law would like to know more about. I feel so ADD right now, LOL.
So many projects, so little time for genealogy...what surprises have you found in your family?
