My Sixteen - Getting Started

Years ago, when I was just getting started in genealogy, I happened upon a book called My Sixteen: A Self-Help Guide to Finding Your 16 Great-Great-Grandparents, by Robert W. Marlin (Land Yacht Press; Nashville, Tennessee; August 1996).  The book gave me some great tips on finding my great-great-grandparents, who I will now forever think of as "My Sixteen".

This blog gives me a way to tell the stories of My Sixteen in "minute biographies", and to update those stories when I discover anything new.  And maybe, just maybe, it will be a way to find lost cousins, or perhaps those I never knew I had, should they find their own ancestors in my stories.

A note to those who may become interested in finding their own sixteen: the Internet is the most important, most powerful tool ever for genealogical research.  The breadth and depth of material now at your fingertips is truly amazing.  But it is also fraught with misinformation, some of it in the form of mistaken identity, some in the form of outright lies, so use it wisely, and verify independently.  Acquire images of original source documents if you can.  And document your sources.  My biggest mistake in my early research was not documenting my discoveries, which in some cases required that I do my research over again.

Whenever possible, visit the locations you uncover in your research.  Doing so will take you from the level of "hey, that's pretty cool" to one that can often quite literally take your breath away.  It's likely to give you insight into the lives of your ancestors, and give you new mysteries to explore.  Make sure to take your camera, an open mind, your imagination, and your sense of humor - all will come in handy.

Please let me know what you think.  Let me know if you find any of this useful.  Let me know if I got something wrong.  For that matter, let me know if I got something right!

/AC