The last time I looked for the number, I found that only about 15% of the world's records have been digitized and indexed. New records have a good chance of being digitized and there are valiant efforts being made to digitize old records. As I continue my genealogy journey, I was thinking about future researchers and where they will have to look for records of our family and where I continue to look for my ancestors.
In our little family, I was born in Kentucky; husband born in Texas; three children born in Turkey, North Carolina and Tennessee. When I was born, our family lived in one county, but I was born in the adjoining county because our home county had no hospital. The same is true for one of my grandchildren. His parents lived in one county but the hospital was in a different county, which also happened to be in a different state!
Being from western Kentucky, researchers are used to looking across county and state lines for birth and marriage records, and that was in looking for records of families who had been born in the same county for multiple generations. On my side of the family, I was the fourth generation to be born in that same Kentucky County (although it did change names in 1854), and in several of my lines, I am the fifth generation to be born/live in that exact same place. Looking at the birth places of my children, I think it's going to be more difficult for researchers (especially for the one born in Turkey!!).
New genealogists are so used to jumping online and looking at trees and thinking they've found all their family. Trees are hints. Trees are not sources nor are they proof. You need documents to "prove" something. Even documents that are primary sources may contain some secondary information that's not to be trusted as correct. For instance, a death record is a primary source as it was created at the time of the event (death), but also included on that document is often information that is NOT primary, AND that doesn't mean that errors can't happen with that primary information also. Sometimes you'll find the names of the parents on that death certificate. Well, the person who died did not give them that information. Who did? The informant is usually listed on the document. If the informant was a sibling of the deceased, then the information is probably (maybe) correct. If the names of the parents were given by the cousin of the sister of the brother-in-law, then not so much.
I have a death certificate of my husband's great grandmother, with her name shown on the death certificate as Lady Clara Henson. We did not know the names of her parents. The only clue I had were the names, listed as the parents, on the death certificate. Those names were given by a granddaughter of the deceased person. I looked for those people, on and off, for twenty years. She had died in Dallas TX and the death certificate said she was born in Memphis TN. No. She was born in Davidson County TN (Nashville) I found later in a printout of a funeral packet. One census showed her dad as born in GA and her mother as AL. The next would show TN and VA. This great grandmother had been married at least twice also, with the second husband being part of the paternal side of her daughter's husband's family (sorry for that convoluted statement, but that's how that research went). On the death certificate the father was listed as Will Guinn and the mother as Margeurite Goodall. I had information from family members of the identity of the siblings of his great grandmother, so I had found her (between marriages) and her children were listed. I finally ordered the death certificates of those siblings to compare the parents listed on them to the ones listed on the death certificate of the great grandmother. The name of the mother on the certificate of one of the siblings listed the mother as Margaret Nanney and the other listed her as unknown, and the father was listed as Mart Guinn, rather than Will on one and Mark Quinn on the other. So onward with the search for Will or William or Mart or Martin or Mark or any other combination I could find.
Finally, a visit to the Tennessee Archives in Nashville Tennessee produced a marriage license, from 1861 between Martin Gwin and Margaret James Nanny. Further research showed these two to be the parents of Lady Clara Guynn in Texas. I learned a LOT by that long, painful search. Now onward to my next mystery!! I still don't know how that person came up with Goodall as a surname.
Good luck with your mysteries and remember your sources in the new year, 2021, and here's hoping we get to open the archives and libraries with healthy, happy people sooner than later!
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