For thirty years an image of Mimke and Antje Habben floated around in my head. After all, when thinking about or researching them, picturing an actual human seemed preferable to visualizing the words “Mimke” and “Antje” floating around in the air above my head. The images were not really\u00a0based upon anything in particular and I cannot remember when I first had them, but they were there. Antje was a shorter and extremely skinnier version of my grandmother–Antje’s great-grand daughter.\u00a0And Mimke? He was an earlier version of Grandma’s brother\u00a0Ed who was always clad in pair of bib overalls. Always. The difference was that Mimke would have been wearing the 1870s version of that attire.<\/p>\n
And then I found the picture and my vision was replaced with reality![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/habben-mimke-anna-for-web-200x300.jpg\")
. Antje was not a skinnier version of my grandmother and Mimke was not wearing bib overalls. I was glad to have the picture. I was excited beyond belief. It’s not often one finally locates a picture of people when they have been the object of research for thirty years.<\/p>\n
But I had to let the visions of them in my head go.<\/p>\n
Reality had a different picture of them for me to see.<\/p>\n
Much like it is with actual research and the things we find in various records. Sometimes we have to let the mental pictures of our ancestors go. In fact, effective research requires that we do our best to put assumptions about our ancestor aside while researching. We do not want those assumptions to cloud our research or cause us to only look for and read those records that confirm our preconceived vision. It is not possible for us to find the most accurate written “picture” of our ancestor if we determine what is true about them before any records have been located.<\/p>\n
We have to put our assumptions aside, locate as many records as we can and interpret those materials in the relevant time and place.<\/p>\n
Because it’s the accurate picture of our ancestors that we want. Or at least the most accurate picture we are able to obtain.<\/p>\n
When our research is complete, the “real picture” may bear some resemblance to the one we have in our head. Or it may bear just a little bit in a way that we would not have imagined.<\/p>\n
Like when I look at that picture of Antje I don’t see a skinny version of my Grandmother–I see a face that bears a subtle resemblance to my mother. And when I look at Mimke, I don’t see anything that remotely resembles my Uncle Ed.<\/p>\n
I see my nose right there on Mimke’s face. That infamous Habben nose staring\u00a0back at me five generations and over one hundred years after the fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For thirty years an image of Mimke and Antje Habben floated around in my head. After all, when thinking about or researching them, picturing an actual human seemed preferable to visualizing the words “Mimke” and “Antje” floating around in the air above my head. The images were not really\u00a0based upon anything in particular and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}