Barbee Research: March 2012

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.

~John Burroughs

Years ago when you wanted to do your families genealogy, things were a lot different. Everything was much slower and more difficult to find. Just trying to locate what records were available and where they were was a task not many wanted to start. You had to write letters and hope that someone would answer. Wait months and months for some answers. Only to find you were not in the right area or looking at the correct records. Today, well things are a lot simpler, computers, databases that have been indexed. Some better than other, but still index. Millions of records as close as an Internet connection. Soooo tell me why there are so many mistakes in what people are posting????

People post "stuff" for all kinds of reasons, but does that make it a FACT? Maybe if it has been posted enough, everyone just accepts it as fact. That is not good. When the ladies wrote the Barbee Book they used the facts, that they were given, at that particular period in time. Those facts may not have been correct.

Are you checking the facts that you might use from their Book, before you pass them on to others as facts?? Why not??? Today you have FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com right in your own home and at the other end of your computer. FamilySearch.org cost you nothing, Nada. Ancestry.com does cost. So some can and some can not use that, but don't let that stop you. Libraries all over the country have paid to be connected to Ancestry and you can use a public library for NOTHING!! Family History Centers are in every state and they are free to use.

What the authors did was WONDERFUL and we owe then a great debit. Take what they did and expand the search. Always check the TRUE FACTS and be sure you are passing on to the next generation the story as correct as you can get. Bad data is bad data, no matter what time period. What is that saying, "Don't be a part of the problem, be part of the solution. OK, that may not be quite correct, but I think you get the message.

Happy Hunting!

http://barbeeresearch-thebook.blogspot.com/p/corrections-for-proctor-family.html

PURPOSE

What I hope to accomplish is

1) Put the book, A Study of the Barbee families of Chatham, Orange and Wake Counties in North Carolina. Compiled by Ruth Herndon Shields, Belle Lewter West, Kathryn Crossley Stone online.

2) To correct some of the many mistakes that are in this book.

3) To put the Supplement to A Study of the Barbee families of Chatham, Orange and Wake Counties in North Carolina compiled by Ruth Herndon Shields, Belle Lewter West, Kathryn Crossley Stone also online and to request corrections.

The differences of opinions will be posted, everyone will be able to accept or reject any of the facts as they so choose. Do you have any documents that you are willing to share?? I will gladly post them here. If you would like to share I will tell you later on in this blog how to send them to me.