From the benefit of hindsight I recently noticed a strange anomaly with the name George within the MAWER family.

I had been posting new individuals onto my MAWER line and noticed that some families who named one of their sons George seemed to lose him and as they seemed dead set that they wanted a son named George they waited until the next son came along and he was baptized George.

The first George to die young among my ancestors was born to George and Frances MAWER, he was born in 1763 and only lived until 1768, and the very next child was a son so he was duly named George, being born just after the other George died, in 1768.

The next George was born 1767 to John and Ann MAWER and he died before 1768, and lo and behold another son was born in 1768 and called George.

The next family tragedy in line was to George and Ann MAWER, their first son George was born in 1800. I don’t have a death date for him but he must have died young because the next child was another son born 1803 and he was named George.

The final set of Georges that I found in my Family History research was born to a CURTIS family. The man John CURTIS married a MAWER lady, their first George was born 1813 and died 1813 and their next and successful attempt to have a George was born 1820.

It is only when we can look back at our list of ancestors that we see patterns emerging although the families concerned probably were not aware that their ‘George’ tragedy had happened before to other people.

It just seemed odd to me that these problems with sons called George happened,other sons within the various families thrived, so why did this happen? Also why were people so hooked up on repeating names of children who died. I have seen the same determination with various female names as well.

Personally I might have thought it a bit of a jinx.

I don’t know if anyone else dislikes the newest setup of the International Genealogical Index, but I do.

I seemed to have a lot more success with the old style, finding ancestors I was looking for, place details which would help me in my search.

Going back over some old family history research I re-checked it and if I had obtained the details from the old style IGI, sometimes I just didn’t get the same information coming up with the new style.

To begin with we were given a choice of new or old but that choice seems to have been withdrawn now and I for one am not a happy bunny!

As I have mentioned before, every so often I like to recheck my information and when I don’t get confirmation that sets me wondering whether I just dreamed the first details. I know I didn’t because I always take a note of where I got family history research information so that I can re-visit the appropriate site.

Maybe I am missing something here, perhaps I am doing something wrong but I cannot imagine what. Has anyone else been a bit disenchanted with the changes?

I have been pondering lately just what I should do with all the information I have.

Ideally it would be great to have it all published in book form but I just cannot visualize how it would all work out. I have around 27,500 people on my tree at the moment, on my computer in the Family Tree Maker programme.

It’s easy to move around the software and go from family to family, backwards or forwards, but how on earth would all that transpose into the printed word?

It would amount to several copies of War and Peace proportions I am sure. Has anyone done this, taken the information and details from their computer family history programme and had it turned into a book?

If there is anyone out there who has done this I would certainly appreciate hearing about how this was achieved.

The reason I am thinking of this in book form is so that other family members could have access to everything. It’s easy for me to go into the Family Tree Maker programme and find anyone I want, but when you try to describe someone on the tree to one of your family members they seem to get that glazed look in their eye after a while and you can just tell they aren’t following you very well.

I think if they could see it actually written down and perhaps accompanied by pictures wherever possible, of the individual, it might start to mean something to other family members.

Now they just treat it as Mothers [or Grandmothers] pastime and seem to feel that it is nothing to do with them. How wrong they can be.

I feel quite concerned that 35 to 40 years of family history research is all going to be wasted when I am not around any more. Not being morbid but I know I won’t last forever and I do feel that it would be a crying shame for all this amazing information to go to waste and never see the light of day again, just because I am not around any more.

So – if anyone out there has any help they can give with regard to publishing their Family History I would be very happy to hear from them.