I’ve just posted the second ancestor bio on this website, this time of my grandfather, Harry Lee Rowland. And yet again, this turned out to be a very enlightening experience. I thought I’d done all my research on Harry, had lots of dates and places and names, as usual. But when it came down to weaving together a story about his life, I realized that there were gaps in my knowledge, especially in terms of coming up with either facts or hypotheses about why they lived where they did and why they moved when and where they did.
And what was really amazing to me is that these were gaps I’d never even noticed before — and I’ve been working on my family genealogy research for over 30 years!
My grandfather died when I was only 6 months old, so I never knew him, but I certainly heard lots of stories about him from my grandmother and dad. After writing this short bio, I feel that I know him a lot better now and appreciate all the struggles in his life and how he overcame them, just as his own father (my great-grandfather) did.
So thanks again to Yvette Hoitink, the Dutch genealogist who started examining how thorough her own personal research was (and then issuing her “Level Up!” challenge) and thanks to Dick Eastman who wrote about this in his weekly genealogy newsletter!
Wonderful to hear the challenge is useful. I’m finding the same thing: writing shows the gaps.