Featured Unintended Side Effects of Antiquing

This is a great idea, they would love it.

 

Debora made a similar suggestion:

 

Hi,
I used to go to a lot of yards sales with my MIL. She would drive me crazy saying "is this good?" or"is this real?". The worst thing she ever did was when I was buying a large collection of Russel Wright china. She said in front of the seller "Is that the rare Russel Wright color you are always selling?" She good the best of me once by buying a teal water pitcher for 25 cents. It was a swirl pattern that I know was selling for 2 grand.
greg

 

I can relate to your exasperation in seeing other people's research having so much information wrong. I have spent years researching my family tree, being so careful to cite sources and show proof of relationships. It makes me infuriated to see content out there on the web that is so WRONG and they irresponsibly put that information on the internet with no sources offered at all. It really leads some newbie researchers down the wrong path that can take a very long time to correct.

 

I'm coming to the conclusion that is what they want.

Our history is being rewritten. Young kids are being told to minimize, so they don't want grandma's stuff - hence no link to family history.

Mess up genealogy lines - why not. Just makes more of a muddle. That way future generations are only tied to the phone and what it tells them to do. No family history, no ties to anything.

 

My wife....not an antiquer.....points to things she's interested in....causing the seller to troddle on over and engage in a conversation....not yet called for...
drives me nuts...

 

Unfortunately, I think you may be on to something. I can't get my daughter or her children interested in our family history at all. I'm sure no one will take over the genealogy research after I'm . And I would bet all my antiques will be either in a dumpster, donated to Goodwill, or sold at a garage sale for pennies. Sad.

 

I had to do that with my sister. She used to go to yard sales with me and loudly ask "What can you sell it for on eBay?"

 

In all honesty, as much as I love the research, most days I wonder why anyone cares about the lives of dead relatives long gone.

I know, I know, I'm a heretic.

 

For me, it's been the opposite. Neither of my parents are interested in genealogy. I know absolutely nothing about my dad's side of the family, and can only go back to the late 1800s with my mom's.

 

Think it adds to one's sense of self, maybe more for some than for others, an answer to the question: what went into making me Me.

 

I know that's a fact. I just don't, not really, get why.

Don't get me wrong, there's tons of research into my own family that I have found interesting, curious, surprising, funny, scary, etc. etc... but beyond the ones who had something to do with raising me, I don't feel like the dead relatives had much to do with making me Me.

Again, I know. Heretic.

 

what went into making me Me.

bottle of wine....couple of shots....soft music....close dancing.... & Whoopie !

 

Not at all.

It's the things that get passed down, whether genetically or cultural habit, that interest me. I have lists of names for a few strands of my family, but nothing in the way of biography or anecdotes, no photos. But I know what parts of the world the first ones to come to America left behind, I know they were virtually all small farmers. It tells me something about why my parents were the way they were, which, in turn...

 

I inherited my interest in family history from my maternal grandmother, who inherited the interest from her father. She had all kinds of family documents and family heirlooms and started passing some on to me when I married. I kept it all in a box until I finally joined Ancestry in 2010. I've learned all kinds of things in the process of documenting the tree I set up, even solved a few "mysteries" like the true story of the death of a second great aunt's only child (had been told a story about her when I was young and curious about why the aunt had no children or grandchildren that turned out to be a fable.) But in that search I also learned that my 2X great grandfather on that side committed suicide in his late 40's - a terrible scandal at the time, but no one had ever mentioned it.

On my Dad's side I finally learned why Dad was so vehemently opposed to gambling when I uncovered though a distant cousin the story of Dad's grandfather "selling" one of his daughters to pay off a gambling debt.

 

Oh, wow! You must have been completely stunned! No such surprises in my family history, but luckily I have been able to trace my ancestors (boring as they may have been!) back to 1515 in Downton, Wiltshire. Farmers and carpenters.

 

Stunned for sure. Reading his 1925 obituary, you'd get the impression that he was a most upright citizen of the community and almost saintly from the religious perspective.

 

Curious what the nationality background is.
1925 obit, means he was born mid 1800s.
To our standards selling one's family member is horrific. Background and thinking was Very different in the 1800s.
Did the daughter fair well in her forced arrangement?


My grandfather was 32 when he married my grandmother at 15. Today's world that is so many laws broken, he would be in jail.
They had 6 children. He died at 75, so they were married for 43 years.

I was told he had been married previously, and his first wife and child died in the Influenza outbreak.
However, in doing the research, she did not die, he may have left her. Don't have any supporting information to say otherwise.

 

Scotch-Irish out of the part of Virginia that became West Virginia during the Civil War. Both sides of the family had been in the US for several generations at that point.

He was born in 1850 and married twice (first wife died in 1886 and second wife - my grandfather's mother - was 18 years his junior when they married in 1891.) By the time of "the transaction" in 1918 they were living in Indiana.

I wouldn't call her life "faring well." The buyer was 26 years older than her and they were already not living together in 1920 (she and 2 daughters were living with her parents.) By the time of her father's death she was far away and married to a second husband. She married a third time some time in the 1930's and as far as I know had no children after the first 2. But she had a long life, dying at 88, back in Indiana with the relative who informed me of the story.

 

Well, this discussion has taken a fork in the road from the original post, but I LOVE reading all these stories! All I could offer in the way of an interesting story is how one of my ancestors in MA was captured by Indians in1704, taken to Canada, and her husband made the trek up to Canada and rescued her! Now, that's devotion!