When does a hobby become an obsession? I'll have to get back to you.....

Some of my friends have been asking me how it feels to be making money from what used to be a hobby: writing.  If I ever make a LOT of money at my hobby, I'll have to come up with an answer for that, but at the moment, I still consider writing to be a hobby - and not my only hobby.

Another of my hobbies started when I was in college, after overhearing an uncle comment about a genealogy book that had the wrong information about my great-grandfather.  Per my Uncle Herb, there was a book that he had looked at called "The Book of Dow" by Robert Piercy Dow, which chronicled three men with the last name of Dow who were immigrants to America during Colonial times.  He stated that this book, having traced the descendants of these three men until 1927, as it was published just one year before my dad was born, was incorrect when it came to our ancestor, one James Parker Dow.  It stated that he was the son of Alexander Dow of China, Maine "by conjecture", but Uncle Herb had always heard that James was the son of Samuel Dow and Roxanne Lamont.

This comment got my curiosity up, and since the library at the college I was attending had a copy in their special records area, I spent a lot of time in the library, as the special records are not allowed to circulate.  This hobby started in the fall of 1980, when I had just lost my dad to cancer and felt very lost and vulnerable, as a way of getting closer to a part of my family tree.  In the years since, I've discovered that there are little feuds going on between some of the family members, so although they are all willing to speak with me about their own research results, I'm not allowed to freely share things among these members without using the BCC function in my email.

I've learned a lot about genealogical tracing over the years.  Among the things I've learned is this:

1) Ancestry.com is a marvelous tool, but the information found there should always be taken with a grain of salt - ESPECIALLY when looking at the family trees posted by other people.  Some actually have researched the facts, but others, like Robert Piercy Dow, have depended on conjectures that they have then posted as fact.  It's always worthwhile to consider the other family trees as "good leads", but then research the information like a detective working a cold case, going to town and state vital records before accepting the lead as a fact.

2) One's relatives don't take it well when it is pointed out that an ancestor, during a time when such things as mental illness and disease were considered God-given punishments for wrong-doings, may well have lied about when, where or how a family member may have met his or her end.  Family rumor is preferred over direct fact for these people, and they would rather perpetrate the lie than allow the truth to come out into the open.

3) Posting a question in an open forum can bring about wonderful new information - and make a connection with a descendant of another family member that can blossom from two researchers sharing information to a very wonderful friendship.

4) NEVER blow off someone who contacts you with a question about something they saw in YOUR family tree!  One of my best leads to date came through someone who was researching her own family tree and wanted to know if the James P. Dow I've been searching for might have been related to someone who would have been her great-grandfather's step-mother.  She provided me with information that I had never seen before from a town I would have never considered searching, and had I blown off her question, I would have still been on a dead end road with my tracing of that one family member.

5) Don't even joke to some relatives about the family being "New England Rednecks" - even if you can prove that it's true!  On a couple of lines of ancestors who settled in Massachusetts, there is some obvious inbreeding action, with several instances of common ancestors in the family tree.  It appears that there was no one closer than second or third cousins, but still.....inbreeding happened in the colonies due to a lack of population.

My sister, when doing a project in 6th grade, had asked my dad where our ancestors came from.  We all knew that my mother's ancestors were from Canada, but what about his?  Dad, always a bit of a jokester, told her that we were "Heinz 57s" - meaning of extremely mixed blood, but he didn't know exactly what.  She was so angry with him for that comment that he placated her by sending her over to speak with one of his older sisters.  My sister cam back to announce that she had been told the following list of countries that made up the Dow clan:  Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Native American - and one other that slips my mind at the moment, because it took her seven fingers to list them all off when she included Canadian. 

Over the years, I've proven ties to all the countries involved except for the Native American line - mostly because the natives didn't have a written language, and therefore, no written records of who was marrying whom.  In reading lots of history books, it has been stated many times that natives who wanted to marry into the white man's society had to have a last name - which the natives also didn't have.  Some of the people would use an animal (bear, wolf, etc.), their location (Conway, Ossipee, etc.)  or a color (black, white, etc.) as their last name in the church records, but since the clergy made no effort to record much more than that, records tend to be a little sketchy.  I'll keep pushing, but it's like finding a needle in a haystack.  One surprise was finding that we had an ancestor from the Netherlands, whom we had never been told about.

On the fun side of things, I've discovered that my father's mother, whose family name was "Burrill", was a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin, whose courtship was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  It seems John and Priscilla's granddaughter, Mercy, married a John Burrill....and the rest, as they say, is history.

Needless to say, when the writing of works of fiction isn't going well, I take a trip to a library or historical society and start digging to see if I can prove my current list of "leads".  I've been into the Maine Room at the Portland Public Library so often that the regular librarian in charge of that room now greets me by saying "Back again?" or "I hadn't seen you in so long, I thought you gave up!"

So, when does a hobby become an obsession?  I think my genealogical hobby is getting awfully close......