The other night I was trolling through some old posts I put up on Ancestry years ago, not knowing that they were actually going to be on the INTERNET (I thought only on the innards of the then small genealogy database) and which, frankly, I deeply regret posting. I lost the password in to delete these myself and have to write to Ancestry to have them all taken down.
NOT ONE POST IN ALL THOSE YEARS EVER RESULTED IN ANY GOOD INFORMATION SHARING, just a lot of new researchers speculating and hoping that the social networking aspect of the site would bring them other people's research for no effort on their part, sad to say. Which is why I think there are a lot of people willing to give subscription databases a spin, without being willing to put the time and effort in, and terribly ignorant that you still often have to use the OLD FASHIONED methods like books, microfiche, films, and writing away to governmental archives.
But strange - someone did post about a year or so ago on one of these many posts I made and it was a story about someone whose surname was similar to the person I posted about. This poster said that the person I posted about was said to have brought with them (on a steamship) enough GOLD to last THREE GENERATIONS.
I had to laugh.
My research on this line is now EXTENSIVE and HARD WON, as well as EXPENSIVE, but I have never found ANY evidence that there was even enough GOLD to live well in the first, immigrant, generation. There isn't one person in the entire family who hasn't worked until they were sick or dead.
THAT MEANS IF THERE WAS GOLD it was buried or lost.
The tale might even have some PIRATES in it!
