Donald
Teuma-Castelletti
SHAWVILLE July 6, 2017
The Pontiac Archives hosted a lesson on genealogy last Thursday, inviting guests from the Pontiac to learn about what steps they can begin with while researching their family’s history.
Presented by Gloria Tubman, the afternoon event saw over 20 guests come out, many brimming with questions of their own to ask the expert. Tubman offered plenty of tips and advice for starting out, while also offering insight into much of her own work and research.
Tubman began the session with examples of materials that are ideal, such as local newspapers and scrapbooks.
“Obituaries then were fantastic,” said Tubman, explaining they generally recorded everything from birthplace to who visited from out-of-town for the funeral.
Family scrapbooks are also a great resource, because they’re filled with those favourite newspaper clippings, especially what was important enough to the family to be clipped out and stowed away.
Tubman also cited family lore as a great starting point, as many stories have fairly reliable roots to research from, whether it be family members’ names or locations. From there, it’s ideal to hit old church records or archives to expand your knowledge.
But, getting to the desired end results won’t be that easy. Tubman admitted she has spent many hours over the years conducting her own research, to the point that she had to set limitations on the time she’d work consecutively.
“If I’m doing research, I can spend four hours a day,” said Tubman. “After that I’ve reached my limit.”
A funny quirk to consider, Tubman explained, was to look for potential spelling variations of a family name. For example, Tubman could have been recorded as Tugman or even Tayman at some point in her family history.
As well, larger families could have been differentiated from each other by location. One family of the Simpsons could be known as Simpsons-on-the-River, just as an easy way to separate the two. These factors can play into the whole spelling issue and researching accurate records, making the task more difficult.
An expert by her own extensive obsession, Tubman first started researching her genealogy around 1990.
“My father wanted to know and I was interested anyways,” said Tubman, of starting out.
With her work, she expanded a previous collection of her family lore within another genealogy book from one and a half pages into a full, 250-page book all its own.
And for those interested in starting out, she provided an important tip for newcomers to their research.
“It’s far easier to disprove any relationship, than it is to prove one,” said Tubman.
