I have been an amateur genealogist for 25 years or so. When I became a father, I realized I actually knew very little about my family. So I started working back, one generation at a time. Today I have about 1500 ancestors in my tree. It has been a fascinating journey.
The funny thing is, no one else in my family has any interest in this huge bevy of data. So I just try to load it all up to Ancestry in case I have a relative or descendants somewhere down the road who will want to know.
The big mystery is my grandfather. He is listed on the 1910 Census as “adopted son.” He was six years old. Rumor in my family is that his sister was actually his mother, and that she went to “take the cure” somewhere and my great grandmother came home with a baby she said was hers. She was 45 at the time.
All of which is to say I likely have an unknown great grandfather. Anyone who knew the details are long gone.
I think things like that happened more frequently a hundred years ago than we imagine. I was researching a fairly distant cousin I'll call MK. The Find A Grave website has MK listed as one of 10 children, including one sister who was 18 years older than he was, and there are some sources that indicate she was actually his mother. He was born two years before his sister/mother got married and they shared a last name.
The 1940 census listed him as a grandson to the parents listed on the FAG site. Also listed on the same census is a son who was born five days before MK was, and while it's theoretically possible they could have been twins born five days apart, my best guess is that the sources that list his sister as his mother are probably correct.
And if all that wasn't weird enough, as an adult later in life, MK's second wife was his daughter's mother-in-law. Kinda makes my head spin trying to figure it all out.
Oh, one more thing, believe it or not. On that 1940 census, the family listed below MK's is my
wife's aunt and uncle, and her four cousins. Her first cousins lived right next door to my third cousins.
Anyway, I think you're smart to put it online, although I'm too cheap to pay Ancestry's membership rates. I'm uploading mine to WikiTree, which is free. Of course WikiTree, Ancestry, Family Search and Find A Grave are
all subject to human errors. Recently I corrected a site that had a father's daughter listed as his wife, even though there is a picture of the tombstone showing his wife's actual name, and the names of their three children.
