8 Things Only a Fellow Genealogy Geek Will Understand

1) I have at least 500 ancestors in my tree who simply "appeared" where they died.  I believe this to be compelling evidence of an alien colonization.

2) When I meet a new person, see the credits on a show or hear a name on the news, I mentally light up when their surname is one that is in my tree and try to remember where that name appears.

3) Thou shalt not simply send us money and get a death certificate in return!  If the death was between this date and this date go this other website, click this specific link, enter your phone number and zip code and get redirected to this other website where they might decide you don't need to pay for a membership to see the record.  If the death was between this date and this date and you are not the child of the deceased (in the 1920s) ancestor, no death certificate for you!  If the date was between this date and this date and in this specific city, they are kept in a vault beneath the earth and you need to call this phone number and speak to the nice dwarven lady to get them.  And finally, if the death was between this date and this date, mail a money order for $15 and a blood sample from your second born to this address.  All alien descendants will be disqualified.

4) I can rattle off three generations of health history and cause of death to my doctor and I am not a hypochondriac.



5) There are three Methuselah Silas and Parmelia Missouri Barnabas couples living within a 100 mile radius of each other on the census of 1810.  All three couples are childless farmers.  One has a cousin named John Smith living with them. It was a sunny day the day the census was taken so they could not have reasonably run really fast in those impractical clothes from house to house to be counted three times.  Alien colonization has not yet been discounted.  Which one is your ancestor?

6) My partner does a first call, second call, third call for dinner and sometimes just brings my dinner to me at my desk when I'm working on my "family tree stuff".  Heart that guy.

7) Me and the South Carolina Archives are tight.  They now just wait until I've submitted all of my requests and collate them into one neat request instead of sending me a letter for each one I will invariably submit on one day.

8) I have learned a new appreciation for those dumb word problems we did in school.  Although I have never used them when determining the missing price in a pattern of prices at a grocery store, when determining who is sitting next to whom at a party or while determining the probability of grabbing matching socks, I have definitely used them in genealogy.  Behold :   "If John and Sandra share a DNA segment on his John's father's side and Sandra is related to Carrie on Carrie's mother's side but John and Carrie are related on Carrie's father's and John's mother' side - and this other person is related to John on both of their sides but only to Carrie on her father's side, who is their MRCA? (There is a real answer to this, btw, that does not involve aliens.  It's two pages long plus a diagram and took me 8 hours and yes, he had to bring me my dinner.)
  Photo : CC 0