Auntie Jen's Family Trees: Week 30: Easy

This week's prompt for the 52 Ancestors posts is Easy. No, I don't mean it is easy I mean the topic is Easy. No... I mean... Yeah, that's not confusing. Explaining the topic is about as complicated as some of my research. While some of my research hasn't been too hard, quite a bit of work has gone into proving family stories, family lines, and locations. When I think about the lines that have been easy to research, I think about what made it easy. And the truth is, the reason it is easy is because of the availability of the records. You have to admit, thanks to modern technology, tracking down ancestors has definitely improved through the years. Let's look at some of the ways things have changed.

I don't know how many generations of your family have been doing family research, but I have some documents from my husband's 2nd great Aunt, Mary Amelia, that contain information about the research she did on the family. These papers were from the 1940s and 1950s. Typed up on a typewriter. Wow! The information on those papers, got me started on the research for my husband's side of the family. How quickly I was able to confirm or deny her research with just a few clicks of a button. But when she did the research, she had to rely on talking with family. There was no going to the library to look up census records on the computer or microfilm. Microfilms started becoming available in the 1960s (from what I could see of my brief search). Most of the research that was done required a lot of work, tracking down information. And if you had family that lived in different towns or states, there were no getting copies of records.

Copies? Well, not like we have today. Copies included you writing down (transcribing) information from that document. They didn't have copiers, scanners, etc. You were the copy machine. If you had the pleasure of viewing the census books, you had to write down everything you needed from all the pages. So Mary Amelia had to have kept notes and copies of everything that she got either from her own research or from family. Then she would painstakingly try to make sure other family members had copies. The best way to make copies from typing is by carbon paper. That at least cut down on how many documents you had to type. I have to admit, I have no clue what kind of research could have been done during this time or what was available to the public. Churches, health departments, libraries, courthouses, etc I assume. The point I'm trying to make is, this was not EASY!
Then as documents were finally being loaded onto microfilm, it was becoming easy to go through records. But unless there was an index included, you were kind of flying blind. That's how it was with Census Records. There were no indexes. You had to go page by page looking for your ancestor. And if they moved to a different district, oh forget about it. And even if you found them, guess what, you still had to copy the information by hand. No cameras, scanners, copiers, etc. Honestly, you had to be very dedicated to getting information and tracking down the family to continue to do this often.
Fast forward to today. Wow! What a difference! Not only are documents being digitized, but they are also available on this thing called the internet.... for EVERYONE to see, no matter where you are. What?! I know our ancestors would be flipping out if they knew how easily their records would be accessible. Especially my great grandparents who purposely went to another state to get married to hide the fact they got pregnant out of wedlock. The lied about when they got married and it was passed down through the years... until their great-granddaughter (me) found their marriage record online. Oops!
Truth be told, we have it SOOOOOO easy today for doing genealogy research. With just a few clicks of a button, we have traced 5 generations. We can share documents, photos, and stories from all over the world with anyone and everyone. And not only can we research documents all over in our own country, but we can also access documents from OTHER countries now as well. Something completely unheard of unless you took a trip over to the country. So yeah, while some of my research had a been difficult process for me, it would have nearly been impossible years ago. So I am grateful for how "easy" my research is today. (Do you understand the topic now?) I know I came to the game right in the middle of research is easy and I've become pretty spoiled for sure, along with a lot of people. So next time, we want to complain about how "hard" our research is, let's be grateful we have the options we have and the availability of the records today.