It may seem from some of my posts that genealogy research is exciting filled with wonderful discoveries. Some days you do get that but the majority of the time it is just grunt work. In order to get to those moments of triumph where you find that illusive ancestor after years of research you have to put in the time doing the work that gets you there.
Last night I spend two hours cutting and pasting the residents of the townlands in Cavan from the remnants of the 1821 census who might be an ancestor of Kathy or me. It was tedious work but these are the kinds of things you need to do to get results.
I cut and pasted over 100 pages of information. Now I will need to extract the good information from all the useless information. I did whole villages because it is always possible that the people living next door are relatives. Good to see who lived around our ancestors.
So be prepared to spend many days hunched over a census, going through parish records one entry at a time and searching endlessly. After years of doing this you may find something, the chances are just as good you may not, so you need to be prepared. This is not instant gratification, genealogy is years of work for one little gem.
Why do we do it? Because any amount of work is worth it for that one little gem. Genealogy is a labor of love.
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