In geneaology, when it rains...

[Erisianmonkey]

man, I tell you it pours. While dealing with a bout of insomnia (which I do way too often) I decided to do a little research on the old family tree. Some of you may recall that I was fairly disappointed that my Walker line seems to be English, not Scots. Well, I just found a Gregg line that definitely goes back to Argyll (MacGregor), and a Dixon line that I've got back to Ulster so far, but that's a name associated with several Scots clans(Chattan, Keith, Macpherson, and Sutherland). I've also found a few more Irish lines as well. It's always neat when one of those big blank sections get suddenly filled with history, but it's even nicer when it turns out Scots or Irish. (Or both, I guess you could say in the case of the Ulster Scots.) I wonder what surprises await next time I rattle the old family timber.

I guess I'm gonna have to get at least a MacGregor kilt now. (Like I really needed an excuse for another kilt.)

[Cawdorian]

Sometimes when you are searching some of the names on the family tree, you make a great find. I was doing some online searching a few weeks ago on one of my GGGM's line and found another cache of family information that took me back another 500 years. Now the hard work begins, looking for the sources of the information in an effort to verify and make certain the information is correct.

Documentation is everything in genealogy. make certain the researcher has posted the sources of their information, there is a lot of bogus genealogical information out there on the net. Google can be an excellent source of information, sometimes it is amazing what you can find when you do a google search on your ancestor's name or place of birth. A lot of information can be found on city, county and state historical websites.

Congrats on the McGregor find, I've got some Gregory ancestors, I haven't been able to trace them back to Scotland yet, but I will keep digging.

[JimB]

Another MacGregor!!!!
Congrats on your find! I keep digging and hopfully will hit some gold soon.

Now if you find some MacGregor tartan at a decent price...let me know!

[gilmore]

Sometimes when you are searching some of the names on the family tree, you make a great find. I was doing some online searching a few weeks ago on one of my GGGM's line and found another cache of family information that took me back another 500 years. Now the hard work begins, looking for the sources of the information in an effort to verify and make certain the information is correct.

Documentation is everything in genealogy. make certain the researcher has posted the sources of their information, there is a lot of bogus genealogical information out there on the net.

That is so very important. Internet genealogy has both its good and bad points. Information is more readily available, but then misinformation can more quickly get into much wider circulation than when we had only printed materials to rely on, and can be repeated over and over again.

Sometimes some do years of research based on other people's (or their own) erronous conclusions, only to see it fall apart like a house of cards when more reliable information is discovered.

I have a cousin who says that he never accepts information until he can hold the original document in his hands. Until then it is tentative. And even then, original documents can contain inaccuracies.

[Erisianmonkey]

True, I've had several lines collapse that way. I put what I had on rootsweb a while back, but I made sure that I put warnings that it is inaccurate on it so that noone will take it as "gospel" (hopefully). That being said, on a few of my lines that, well, shall we say, "converge" at various points (cousin marriages), I've got a built in yardstick. I'm also lucky that my mother's side of the family, Cox, happens to be one of the most researched and documented names out there, at least from the colonial period on.

Edit:
Another interesting note is that my mother's side of the family and my father's side of the family, most lines, tend to be within about 150 miles or less in distance from each other at quite a few points in time. I'm just waiting for that find that ends up tying my two sides toegether at some point

[Angus]

You know those sleepless nights you were talking bout....well turns out that I'm not as German as I thought... my really French surname was changed when my family came to PA in 1710, don't know why...but they were living in a predominantly German area. I suppose they figured when in Rome.....
On a different note, I've found marriage certificates in Scotland for my name in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and maybe one more that cant remember right now, but I thought that was awesome....maybe an over share but it got me really excited

[Erisianmonkey]

Yeah. I looked at a couple of Gregg geneaologies that supposedly trace John Gregg of Argyll clear back to Griogair, but all the source documentation they have stops with John Gregg.

[glengall1]

My name is Stephen Walker Dickson so I have a few of your lines in my name alone. We may even be related thorugh about 300 years ago and about seventy different lines :}

Dixon tends not to be the most popular spelling in Scotland as they are derived from the original Dickson.

Walker was my grandmothers maiden name.

Dickson was a sept of clan Keith and that is the tartan I wear.