Whether or not you're new to genealogy, one thing that you must do: contact living relatives (especially older ones) and get their stories! It's so sad, but they won't be with us forever and once they're gone, they take their memories with them.
Case in point:
I was so happy when I brought home a copy of the 1920 census where my grandfather and several siblings were kids living in my great-grandfather's house. One of the neat things about census records is that several list a person's occupation. According to the 1920 census, one of my grandfather's older brothers, Peter, was a Shoemaker. Sounds normal enough, right?
A few months later I visited my great-Aunt Zitzie (another of my grandfather's older siblings) in the nursing home. She was in her early nineties, but as sharp as ever. At one point, the whole thing about Uncle Peter being a shoemaker came up. My family were traditionally farmers and carpenters, so this was odd and something we thought we should ask about.
Apparently, in my family's history and/or culture, a "Shoemaker" was not a favored profession. According to Zitzie, she remembered the day the census man came around. Uncle Peter did something to upset their dad that day, so when asked about the occupation of his kids and Peter came up he called him a "Shoemaker" - an insult, not his true occupation.
The point of this little story? It's great to gather all the paper records (there's plenty of time to do that). But if you have the ability to get information and stories from real, live people, DO IT!
P.S. Aunt Zitzie passed away that summer. I'm so happy I at least got to speak with her when I did.
Labels: census, genealogy, shoemaker, stories
