Murphy's Law

Submitted by: HOST GFS Nance@aol.com
From OH-MEMORIES mailing List
 

Anything that could have burned, did.

The census taker with the clear handwriting and good ink never enumerated your ancestors.

If you find a well documented, illustrious ancestor, you've probably made a mistake.

Your folks hated government and never filled out forms.

The book you need is never indexed, or, if indexed, doesn't include people.

Your families never had attics, much less Bibles or boxes of photos in them.

All real library discoveries are made five minutes before closing, when the copier is broken.

The correctly shelved books and correctly filed forms are never the ones you need.

The person sitting next to you at the research centre is finding ancestors every five minutes ...and telling you.

The email address that bounces is the one from a person who listed your exact names. If you find a working address, you aren't related.

Your microfilm reader is the one that squeaks, has to be turned backwards, and doesn't quite focus.

Your cemeteries have no caretaker or records archive.

Alternate spellings and arcane names were your folks' favourite pastimes.

Or, your folks only knew three names, and used them over and over in every collateral line.

Your sister neglects to mention that the data she gave you, which you have researched, and sent to other researchers, was just a guess with no foundation, and she guessed because she "didn't like leaving that line blank."

Your mother neglects to mention that, "Oh, yes, we knew they changed their name."

Blank genealogy forms never have quite the categories or space you need.

All software packages look good, but immediately have a problem with *your* special case.

Discussions about how to compute cousinship are never resolved.

And finally, it's infinitely easy to get sidetracked doing genealogy (grin).

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