Written by Karen Zach
I’m a fool for doing freebie genealogy, once spending over 300 hours on a huge project for a friend. Never charged, but they did give me $100. Many times it’s a thank you but that’s okay, I’m stupid that way. After all, it’s about the love of the hobby (50 years of it so far and hoping for another 20 or so).
While working on others, whether by payment or free, I have had so much fun and frustration. In the one mentioned above, I found three of her four great grandpa’s dying on the poor farm. Oddly, she only knew one had. It was a rude awakening, and she felt sad about the discovery. Only one of the three had a tombstone, so her father and his brothers went together and had the other two made up and placed.
Another friend I helped insisted her husband was a Native American. He was raised in an orphanage and only saw his mother a few times with his grandparents visiting him a few times a year. He insisted that grandma told him once about a Native American princess. Granted, he was dark complected as was his grandma, but he did not look Indian at all. There was no proof there was Native American in his background. I found two ancestors from France not too many generations back and was more than confident that is where the skin color came from, but he wouldn’t listen. That was about 10 years ago and he still won’t hear of it.
Speaking of Native Americans, I did a great deal of research for a lady who turned 100 that I interviewed for an article for our local newspaper. Her only bucket list wish was to find her Native American connection. Her nephew had done a great deal of research but had not discovered it. I queried her for a long time (she was sharp as a tack and got out a huge roll of all the nephew had found but no proof to the Native American) yet went home with confidence I could find it. Didn’t! However, we are fairly sure that we have it, just not definite proof. This whole family looks Native American and there was a pocket of them in the area of Indiana they hail from, plus many other points-to, but not complete proof. However, I took to her what I and a few others thought and she was pretty happy and confident she was gonna’ meet that gal, her great-great-granny real soon in Heaven and clasp her with a friendly Indian bear hug!
Yet another friend asked me to find her a Revolutionary soldier. She even told me which one she could go in on (her aunt went in on this man) and she just needed a couple of things. I found so much for her (one side only being in America since 1890 and the other side not but about 40 years earlier but great families and wonderful things including letters in the 1870s) yet she could never go in on any Revolutionary soldier, I’m afraid and definitely not the one her aunt was erroneously in DAR on, as that was the father of her ancestor’s 2nd wife, not her or the aunt’s ancestor. Oh, my, it took me a long time to convince her of that, but she at least got to go into Indiana Pioneers and she’s quite happy about that!
So, doing free (and paid) genealogy is certainly interesting most of the time; however, it can be as frustrating as researching your own … but, wait it can also be as much fun!
