How gullible do they think we are?

There's a popular television show on now called "Who Do You Think You Are?" that follows various celebrities as they search for one of more of their ancestors.  I watch it regularly and enjoy seeing people find interesting details about an ancestor's life.  I also admit I'm a little envious that I don't have several professional genealogists at the ready, able to look up documents and find hidden stories and facts about my ancestors.  At the same time, I'm irked that it is so set up, so unrealistic to those of us who search for hours at a time, on a weekly if not daily basis, for years just to find what they find on the show in ten minutes.

Each week, they make it look so easy.  All you have to do is find a grandparent's scrapbook with clues.  Then you breeze into a library or hall of records with a genealogist waiting for you.  He or she has newspaper articles or ancient data books, ready for you to find exactly what you need.  Then he or she points you to another city and another genealogist.  You hop on a plane and walk into the next library, with another expert waiting for you.  Somewhere in there, you type in the name of your ancestor on the ancestry.com website (one of the show's sponsors) and up pops exactly the record you need.  Eventually, you find out something amazing.  Your ancestor fought in the Revolutionary War, or was in debtors' prison in Europe, or was executed in the Spanish Civil War, etc. 

Last Friday's show featured Rob Lowe on the hunt for a possible ancestor that fought in the Revolutionary War. (The DAR calls such people "patriots.") Rob started out with his brother Chad and they looked in Grandma's scrapbook, which interestingly, looked nothing like any scrapbook of any grandmother I've ever seen.  Each page had only one or two documents or photos and they were perfectly placed on the page.  The documents were not yellowed, dog-eared or tattered in any way, and the scrapbook itself was brand new. 

Then Rob is off to find out about one name he came across and he finds out this man was a Hessian who had fought against the colonies in the Revolutionary War.  Rob is, of course, depressed that his ancestor was not a "patriot," until he finds out that his ancestor eventually paid taxes to the colonies after he left his job as a hired soldier, and for some reason this makes Rob eligible to apply to the "Sons of the American Revolution" for membership, which, of course, one of the experts on the show did for him.  This made me laugh.  How does someone who fought agains the American colonies during the Revolutionary War suddenly become a "patriot?"  Anyway, I don't know all the rules and regulations of the Sons of the American Revolution, so I won't comment further on that, but I have to say it really struck me during this particular episode how the show, as interesting as it is, really gives a false impression of how most of us non-celebrities find information about our ancestors. 

I asked myself after Friday's episode:  "How gullible do they think we are?"  First of all, most of us don't have scrapbooks in perfect condition.  Any documents I have - like old newspaper articles, are so yellow I can barely read them.  And most pictures from my grandparents' eras, let alone ancestors dating further back, need photo restoration.  Secondly, I don't have genealogists to help me access just the right record in some archive somehwhere in New York or Ohio or Pennsylania.  Third, I can't just hop on a plane and present myself at a library where some eager genealogist will do the work for me.  And finally, while I can go on ancestry and find much information, I can't do it the way they do on television.  First, I have to pay nearly $30 a month just for the privilege of going on the website.  Then, I can't just type in a name and find the exact I want.  I have to first find the correct data base, and that can take hours or days.  And, of course, no one is going to help me become a member of the DAR.

Then again, maybe I'm not really that envious.  While Rob Lowe, or Martin Sheen, or Paula Deen can have their families researched for them (as admitedly I had done for my husband's Croatian family because it was unrealistic for me to fly to Croatia to do it, and besides, I can't read Croatian), most of the time I have to spend hours at my computer and going to libraries and even cemeteries, in order to find the information I need.  And while that is time-consuming and at times frustrating, it is also a lot of fun. When I find information on someone that has eluded me for months, I am thrilled.  It's like discovering little pieces of buried treasure.  Pictures and stories can be even more exciting.

So doing genealogy work may be exhausting, and at times it may be tempting to have someone do the work for you as they do on "Who do You Think You Are?" But doing it myself is much more rewarding.