TWO YEARS AND FIFTY POSTS

After about two years of blogging, I've finally completed fifty posts.  Hopefully you learned something valuable about genealogy and found some of my stories entertaining.  This may be my last post for a while.  I've just been too busy lately.  I think I'll use this opportunity to sum up this whole website and write about some random topics that I think are important.

Genealogy doesn't pay well.  I originally hoped to get Google to display ads on my page so I could make a few bucks and keep this going.  Unfortunately, they won't do it.  You have to post frequently (like once a week) if you want to be worthy of making money off Google ads.  I also had hoped to become an Ancestry affiliate and earn a few bucks by linking to their site.  They ignore my requests though.  I assume it's because I'm taking away from their business by providing free help to anyone looking for family members.  They want to charge you a ton of money to do what I do.  It will cost you thousands of dollars to get to the same result I get to for free.  I'm sure they don't like that one bit.

What's the most interesting thing I've learned from my experience as a genealogist?  I mention this in one of my posts...  The amount of people who discover they don't know who their real father is, is definitely the most shocking thing I've seen.  Finding birth parents is exciting, but accidentally finding out someone's family is completely wrong is a real shocker.

DNA centimorgan values and relationships are often difficult to decipher.  It would be nice to look at a match list and see several people with a 900cM value and have them actually be a first cousins.  It's rarely that easy though.  The amount of bizarre relationships I've seen is just crazy.  Many of my posts involve strange findings within a family and how difficult it was to solve a mystery with DNA.  It's exciting to solve those types of puzzles, but sometimes I just want a nice easy one.

People still don't understand DNA.  The lack of understand involving DNA is another real shocker.  So many people do Ancestry DNA to look for birth parents and think that the birth parent also has to do DNA to find them.  Or, they have some understanding, but never bother to investigate those large DNA matches.  Understanding the numbers and data can be hard, but sometimes it's not.  A little effort can really reveal a whole lot.  Don't give up.

What makes genealogy so enjoyable to me?  Several things really.  Having people call me on the phone crying because they are so happy I found their family members is always exciting.  Or, the moment when everything comes together and all the data fits together like a jigsaw puzzle to solve a mystery.  I've written some stories about some cases I've worked on that seemed completely impossible to solve, but somehow I got it done.  It continues to amaze me how the smallest piece of data can lead to some incredible findings.

The secret life of everyone.  This is something I see over and over again, SECRETS.  The number of people secretly having children is unbelievable.  Secrets seemed to be far more common in the past.  So many children were put into orphanages in the old days, no one seems to know who is really related to who.  I've also written about people disappearing and changing their identities.  It was easier to do back then, and people really did get away with it.  Some people believe "the old days" were a more innocent time.  LOL!  No way!  It was just easier to get away with stuff back then.  Thanks to DNA, these secrets are finally being revealed.

A great history lesson.  I didn't expect all this understanding of DNA to also lead to an understanding of US and world history.  I've learned a lot about events that happened in war time.  Wars really tend to create a lot of secret children.  There were so many people having affairs during war time, both men and women, it's quite surprising.  I wrote an interesting story called Black Market Babies that was really surprising as well.  That's a subject you don't hear about in history class.  I also sometimes find people are related to a famous person in history.  That's always a fun thing to discover.

I can't get a response!  Getting people to respond on genealogy sites is the most frustrating thing I've encountered.  I know so much information about people's families, but sometimes can't find anyone to tell my findings to or answer my questions.  You can still respond to emails on genealogy sites, even with an expired account.  Check those accounts people!  Also check your messages on Facebook!  I might be trying to contact you.

Thank you!  Thanks to everyone who read my blog and to all those who let me solve their mysteries.  A special thanks to everyone who donated.  You helped pay for this site.  I'm not completely done.  I'll still be solving mysteries as much as I can, but may not be writing as much anymore.  Feel free to continue to contact me about any mystery or genealogy related topic.

Look for more posts sometime in the future.