As I say in every 3rd post, my interest in genealogy has been digging further & further back in time. My focus has been 90% on following the bloodlines/pedigrees back as far as I’m able.
In the past few days I’ve switched gears. Similar to Cousin Pat Moir’s big project of finding as many descendants of John DeVeny and Anna Wolgemuth [including me], I’ve picked a pair of my ancestors which I’ve been exploring lately. And I’m apparently going to see how far forward in time I can take them. They are Henry Mathias Bussdicker and Catherin Margaret Maess.
Why them? Maybe because someone (possibly cousin Harriet Bussdicker Burris out in CA) gave Mom that great photo of Henry M. and Margaret which included all of their children who didn’t die early.The picture is here in my blogsite somewhere. So the project becomes finding THEIR descendants. Or maybe the timing was right (psychologically) for me because — unexpectedly — I’ve found both of the ships they arrived on in the mid-1800s. Or maybe because I continue to try to correct the many crazy Family Trees done early on (early in the history of the internet, I mean) with information I’m very certain of. Some of these folks have even publically slammed the BUSSDICKER “misspelling” in the past. Sheesh!
That spelling has at least been used consistently by the descendants I’m looking for. I guess it’s fully natural to keep on keepiong on, spelling-wise. It happened with Pat’s pair: when WOLGEMUTH is seen in a document, etc. (in America) it virtually always refers to the family members who were in Dillsburg, Pa and thereabouts… and their descendants. Searches done demanding exact spelling can just about always be relevant and interesting. BUSSDICKER works the same way.
Oh! Of course. One more reason for choosing my two ancestors is that their shared surname is not at all common. Doing this for “David Gray” would be maddening.
To me the downside of working forward in time is that many people do not want their data splashed all over the internet. I fully understand that concern. So this works against my urge to write Cousin Jane Doe in Ypsilanti asking for all the details about every Bussdicker descendant she knows of. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
But at the moment, there are masses of facts and people that I don’t know yet. Even without flirting with security issues with “live” cousins.
