[The guest writer today is Betty Johnson, who amplifies so well the point that I made recently about " Do Not Copy, Investigate ". With her permission, I have extracted some of her thoughts, to give them a more permanent home. John ]
"We are looking at more than 80 years of misinformation that needs correcting [in this case, Yager history, but true for all families]. I am in total agreement with Jan [another researcher], who does not want to make premature public statements.
"I think you should know what has gone into these "fortuitous" discoveries. Forgive me, but I have to point out what is involved: Only a small portion of reliable data can be found on the Internet, or in published compilations and abstracts. Even today, research still requires much travel to many courthouses and libraries, ordering microfilm of deeds, tax records, etc., waiting weeks for it to reach your local library, then sitting for countless hours staring at indecipherable handwriting on microfilm readers for days at a time. We won’t even talk about lifting heavy books, destroying one’s eyesight, or the permanent kinks in wrist, neck, and back muscles. Accumulating the masses of data is just the first step - and I do mean masses every little bit and piece. It then has to be sorted out.
"Deeds, wills, estate sales, court orders, church records, marriage records, land tax records, and personal property tax records, and anything else that turns up all have to be studied. The hardest part is examining long-accepted work published work to see if its sources are reliable. Does the compiler cite sources at all? The sheer vagueness of much printed material is maddening! I am driven to distraction by family histories which list a sort of bibliography at the end, without stating clearly just which statement is backed up by which source. So many take data from two or more sources and splice it together for no good reason. We are evidently to assume divine revelation.
"One has to memorize names and landmarks to be able to recognize them when they recur, and to make the appropriate connections between them. Jan has traveled across many states to do hands-on research in Spotsylvania, Orange, Culpeper, and Madison Counties in VA. I live much closer only 6 hours away by car but it’s still not that easy to make the time and allocate the funds to spend days or weeks in small VA towns. Our spouses point out more advantageous uses for these funds like ocean cruises! One of the major jobs is keeping our families happy while we neglect them in favor of dead relatives we might not have even liked, had we known them."
Betty Johnson
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.