I was rummaging around on ancestry.com this morning looking for anything new for my family tree, even though I don't expect to find much more than a few details here and there. Details are great, of course, but since I've been at this for over 30 years, I think the tree is as filled out as it's ever going to be. But as long as there's a chance that I might discover big new branches for it, I look anyway.
I got pretty excited when I saw that someone had put a whole bunch of information out there that I didn't have for one of my umpteenth-great-grandmothers. Then I got to the part where she lived to be 109 (1731-1840) and gave birth to 14 children, the oldest when she was five and the youngest when she was 93.
People often want to make connections so bad that they throw logic out the window. One time I saw a family tree a guy had put together to prove he was descended from Charlemagne. Since some of my family dovetailed into his, I checked it out, and it looked good, as long as you were willing to believe that some 13th-Century dude was born 70 years after his mother died.
It is natural for people to want to find famous folk among their ancestors. I am sure people are bored to death hearing that Queen Elizabeth II is my 22nd-cousin (since Edward I and Eleanor of Castile are our mutual 21st-great-grandparents), but it took more than 20 years of research to find that out, and it can be proved.
Back in the day a fellow genealogist had some note cards with an image on the front showing four or five little cartoon characters laughing uproariously and saying, "You found who in your family tree?"
I wish I had some of those to send to these people.
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