About That Paragraph at the Bottom of This Page …

I mean it.

“If you see your ancestors on this blog … contact me! I am always happy to share information. My e-mail address is in my profile (the link under the section entitled “About Me”).”

This is not just filler. There is a reason that same sentiment is expressed at the end of every one of my Surname Saturday/Featured Family Friday posts: “I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family.”

This blog has many purposes – some foreseen when I created it, some not – but the main purpose is to share information with fellow researchers.

I have seen the benefits to be derived from putting genealogical information out there on a blog many times and through it have already made many wonderful contacts with relatives and fellow researchers. And I have read about similar experiences described by my fellow geneabloggers. These contacts have added greatly to our research and enriched our genealogy experience.

So there is no reason to be shy: please do not hesitate to contact me! I post the information and you are free to copy it. But there is more where that came from; these are only the “bare bones”! If the feeling that you are a beginning researcher and don’t have much to contribute is holding you back, don’t let it! I still consider myself a beginning researcher, and once I was a real newbie. I basically knew my parents’ immediate families and little else. Yet I dared to write to a couple of experienced researchers who I was certain had information on my mysterious great-grandfather. I had one piece of information to trade: I knew his mother’s maiden name. And we continue to trade information.

But you do not need even that. I am simply happy to find out a little about you and your family connection, if that is all you know. You may have a piece of information I have been searching for. And I also believe that I should treat people searching for information with as much consideration as those first two contacts and many others have treated me.