Monday, May 11, 2009

Perkins Project

Sometimes, I take on too many projects at once! Does this sound familiar?

Being a professional genealogist and member of the APG, has causes me to slow down much of my own work to help others. I was warned about this in 2003 by several prominent genealogists at a regional conference. I tried to listen, really I did!

But, today, collaboration by several people, using the Internet, is the modern way to solve problems of family history. Each person has a "piece" of the puzzle, access to family held records and memberships in different organizations so we work together for quality information.

Although, I am a Perkins descendant, I really didn't know much about this family until last summer. Since then, I have been lucky to locate several researchers who are working hard on their "charts".

One Perkins researcher is writing a book about this family. To ensure the quality of his data for this branch, which lived in Bridgewater, MA, a family member and I have been gravestone hopping together to find graves and the dates on them to "fix" and supplement the information in two previously written books. I am happy to say that this project is coming along. The Vital Records of Bridgewater gives us a lot of solid evidence to work with.

There are stumbling blocks to overcome but we forge ahead.

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