Taking a detour

I decided to use the resources of Ancestry DOT com to see what might now be available on some other relations' trees.

I spent an enjoyable couple of hours learning about some folks in the mountains of Western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley area, and there were lots of grave markers, and grave signs, and their lives all delineated with all kinds of children.

But they weren't the correct relations.  In 1910 a census report gave a man named Harry as a child of either J.F. and Josie, or H.J. and Sarah...and if he was the son of H.J. he would have been named Ellon H., not Harry D.  They were born within a year of each other.  And on a census report, a child who has already had their birthday will appear as 9 years old, whereas one who was born later in the year will still be counted as 8 years old.  Fortunately there were two listings in the 1910 census and one looks like the correct one for my relatives.

I'm not giving their last names, because there are probably a lot of people in that area who still have that name.

They lived in different communities, close, but not the same.  And they probably have a common ancestor.

But all those pretty markers belonged to a family which wasn't related to my own relatives.

Oh well.  I've not removed all the family, just the problem folks who were being shoved into my family inadvertently.  How did I find out?  Well, there was a Census taken which showed Harry living in another state at the same time that Ellon H. was still living in Virginia...and I knew the link came through the other state.

So I took a detour into someone else's family tree.  It was kind of fun, though of course a waste of time if I were on the clock.  But being interested in genealogy, I've found time is measured entirely differently than it is in industry.