1. Is that even an actual name?

You get back to a certain point in your family history that you stop seeing the common names that you know and love now. You see “Festus” and “Ishabana”, but of course you see the names “George”, “John”, and “Mary”, too. You can also see certain names carried down for generations, and subtle changes in the name that end up making a huge difference. A last name doesn’t have an “S” on the end for four generations, and then suddenly, the “S” gets added, and then that last name now has the “S”.

2. Wow, that person was old when they died

It is really just a random roll of the dice seeing people either really old or really young. The life expectancy in the 1800’s has hovering right around 40 years old. So you get used to seeing everyone’s headstones and they’re mostly around the age of 40’s or 50’s when they died. But then you find the one odd seed that lived through the Civil War, World War I and The Great Depression.

3. Is that a double cousin? Crap, that is a double cousin

We all have them. It hits you when you’re cross referencing the headstone database, and everyone in the family is listed as buried in the family plot, and you’ve already done the other parents lineage, and you see a name you recognize. “Is that the same name I already did, or does someone have the same name?” (Same names, fist middle and last, happened a lot, so it could always be that) But then you see that hyperlink has already turned purple, you’ve already clicked on it. It is a double cousin.

4. Am I related to anyone famous yet?

Let’s face it, that is a lot of the reason that most of us start doing our genealogy. We all think, “well, my last name is pretty prevalent in history, so maybe I’m related to some of those people”. Yeah, no. Nice try. That rarely happens. Maybe you have family stories that say you were related to someone or another, but then you can’t find any evidence that it is actually a true story. And then sometimes your heart skips a beat. You see the name “Daniel Boone”. You find out everything you can on him. Nope again. Boone is his middle name, not last.

5. This is actually really rewarding

Don’t get me wrong, genealogy can be a lot of hard work, but also very rewarding. You, and your family, are a part of history. Maybe it isn’t the parts of history that you would want to be a part of, but when you see your third great grandfather’s World War II draft registration card, and your first cousin five times removed Civil War registration for the North, and his brothers registration for the South, you know that this is what history is made of.