GENEALOGY IN MODERN TIMES

Genealogy is a wonderful activity to pursue. For over 29 years, it has been a passion to discover my ancestors and share with interested family members.When I first begun my journey, many visits to the library and scrutiny of microfische reels took hours and years of pursuit. Buying books, census and cemetery records from local genealogical societies assisted in the completion of cousin lines. With many databases placed on the Internet, the job became easier to access over the years. It still is detective work needing each line to be recorded one person at a time. Finding the same person in different places validates the information to be correct. Even TV shows now have genealogy as a main topic. For example, Who Do You Think You Are is quite fun to watch as celebrities find out pertinent information about ancestors. What I find amusing is how one will visit a library or resource and the person whether it is the Librarian or Archivist gently says I found a resource for you and turns to the exact page with the name. Those of us who do genealogical research know that it was probably hours of work locating the book completed by a team at the library. It is is great TV but the hours of research needed to give the tidbits gets glossed over!! There seems to be a heightened interest in genealogy which is always exciting. My many binders need some weeding of old notes and completion of family lines. With the 1921 Canadian Census now available to researchers perhaps some little gaps will be plugged. The 1842 Census of Canada West and Canada East is also available online. So with the click of a mouse, research can be done from home. There are always brickwalls that are frustrating. Maybe some new researchers may need some of my information and may have a missing clue for me.