(Cynthia here, making Feet-in-Mouth Notes)

Armed with the given & SIMMONS Surname of the *Wife* of my Sam CLAYTON,
and two conflicting Wisconsin death certificates of my great-great
grandmother & her brother both born in the early 1800s in NC (!), which
named THEIR MUTUAL FATHER as being born both in "Virginia" (which is
large when no County is named); and also as being born in "North
Carolina" which he wasn't....I am eternally grateful to the Binns for
early on providing the indexing & search means for me to nail down Surry
& Isle of Wight Counties, ultimately leading me to Southampton just prior
to their short stay in NC as the seat of the SIMMONS/SYMONDS in the
earlier times -  so I had a clue which county resources online upon which
to concentrate my Deed& Will finding efforts.  Family research & myths
aside, there was nothing so valuable to me as seeing the actual image on
the website,  the actual family names right there before my very eyes
along with neighbors who ultimately became fellow travelers on the
roundabout trek West..

I made a deathbed promise to my beloved grandmother whose own mother had
died when she was 8 days old and was not spoken of again when her father
remarried,
to "find her missing family".  I had little to go on but whispered family
stories Gram half remembered overhearing from her older siblings.... I
needed all the help I could find...

I have almost, *almost* concluded that like lending money, I need to look
at anything I might set out on the Internet as *gifted* - as in *Tossed
to The Wind*.  Make my best effort & accept that it's out of my hands
once I hit SEND.

Gulp.
Squirming here, because I have not yet translated this Glorious
Conclusion into Action.

And I was reminded again reading Paul's comment, "What most fail to
realize is that less than 40% of all the records we MIGHT one day want to
use have been abstracted or otherwise made available to researchers, and
of that 40%, less than 30% is yet available on the net.  So it is that if
we read EVERYTHING on the net, we would have viewed something in the
neighborhood of 12% of what is out there."

I don't make my living in genealogy. Nor am I even writing a book nor a
paper, well other than this current novelette by email.  And I've gotten
burnt too, for one thing - finding my personal little rootsweb gedcom
recycled with appendages of supposed descendants not remotely within the
parameters of human fertility, nor of similar national origins...

At present,  I am sitting on a number of completed 1850 Census
transcriptions I've done up which I find indispensable in my own personal
research and am certain would be a welcome addition to the general
genealogical database of their particular county websites, but.......

First of all, even though whatever I am doing is not for profit, in the
context of this discussion I realize now I *stole* the original census
images I've painstakingly transcribed, by way of my paid ancestry.com
subscription... yes?

And then, I didn't like the official "GenWeb Census Format" that extends
data beyond the computer screen 'n formatted my own transcriptions for
easy use that DO fit the screen.  Comparing some completely insensible
surnames with local marriage license lists, early land records, later
census listings, bios, and in a few cases personal knowledge, I have
typed up the entries with recognizable (& computer searchable) spellings,
sometimes disregarding the enumerator's artfully scripted but phonetic
concoctions.  (I don't always like that when "other people" transcribe
things adding their own [unbracketed] conclusions...even if they DO know
for absolutely sure...)  You see?  Yet mispellings aren't computer
findable and I was first of all doing this for my own personal use.

It's a horrible job.  "Errors" are inevitable.  If the enumerator hasn't
gone 'n made 'em, (miswritten, misunderstood, mispelled, misplaced,
misnumbered)...I can certainly misread the blurry scribblings myself.
Short of that, I am still wondering if one Illinois head of household
enumerated as,  "SIMMONS, Medad",  was somewhere out in the back-forty
the day the census-taker stopped by the farmhouse.

Nevermind, but then you know what I am getting at.  And once you submit
any of these things "to expand the accessible databases online", are you
consigning yourself to make endless updates if you hear from each and
every descendant who knows for sure a child's age was wrong or given name
spelled otherwise?

In the average 1850 county census with say 1200 dwellings consisting of
one to 21 dwellers therein, attempting to satisfy every researcher's
concerns could amount to a fulltime nightmare.

There's a lot of re-thinking, reshuffling, (work and forgiving) to be
done if we hope someday to be able to trace our families with a click of
the mouse.  Back in 1996 when I first connected to the internet there was
next to nothing online, very very little in the way of raw genealogical
data.  Even though now the amount of material is overwhelming, yet not
too long ago I myself sent a whining plea to the Powers That Be begging
that it be suggested to the hundreds of county genweb volunteers they
upload at least a Township Map of their counties -  one of those with the
1-36 sections of each within their boundaries would be nice....&
available to scan from their local libraries but ordinarily not available
to researchers in other counties much less in other States - so we can
orient ourselves to the data they offer, yadda yadda...well you know,
gratitude for what DOES exist online doesn't always override my
frustration.

Now in 2004, there is however, HOPE !!!

Hope that some kind soul in some corner of the universe will maybe even
inadvertantly include that missing link we've been desparately seeking in
their contribution and some fine morning we will put the surname in again
and voila! it will google right up...

We've had enlightening, if not absolutely conclusive discussion on
conflicting aspects of "Passing on our research once we pass on"; and I'm
thinking it timely,  if not totally out of line, to discuss "fearlessly
passing it on now" .  To increase the online database for each other and
future generations of researchers.  Yes there are pitfalls.  And
surprising consequences.  Some pretty unpleasant ones.  But I keep
feeling I ought to submit the stuff I've worked so hard on if it only
helps just one person, like I've been helped.

Cynthia, shutting up now at long last; permanently, folding up her
portable podium; going back to sulking over things.

Well no wait a minute. PS, Steve?:  there was a lot, A LOT, of email that
arrived in my mailbox yesterday, also mourning the loss of your website;
which I see today now receiving my digest, wasn't sent in to the whole
list.  While it's absolutely out-of-line for me to ask you to reconsider
when I can't even get myself to put my dopey little personal gedcom back
online - well you know, I'm hoping you'll reconsider anyway.


.

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