26 November 2010

Imagine this family group sheet in the future!

100 years from now a family genealogist is looking at a family group sheet posted on whatever the technology of the day is. The first thing the budding genealogist notices is that somehow in the one ancestral family branch the father, mother, and child have all been given the same day of birth, November 24th. This genealogist has already taken some classes from the experts of the day and knows to question such a thing. Did the person doing the earlier research make some mistakes when doing the data entry? Was there an error made by the hospital clerk who did the data entry into the state's master birth files? The genealogist realizes that the person who compiled the family group sheet did not cite the sources and wonders why those folks back in 2010 didn't do that?

Then the future era genealogist notices that the mother's surname is the same as the father's surname. Didn't those earlier genealogists realize that these are supposed to list the maiden name of the mother? 

So research begins to ascertain the correct days of birth for this family and the maiden name of the mother. The index to the Minnesota birth records and, of course, digitized information from all the 20th and 21st century births for the state are easily accessible on her home digimatic machine.

Whoa, Mom's birth surname is the same as the Dad's. And all three have the same date of birth. Could this be true? Well, next the digimatic is checked for the back files of everything that was on those old televisions. There is a story on November 26th, 2010 that tells the story of the baby being born on November 24th, the same birthday as both his parents. Maybe everything that is found on this newfangled technology isn't too bad. It even says the Mom and Dad have the same surname.

True? Yes, the story appeared today on one of my local TV stations today, KARE 11. You may read the full story about Jamal White, Jr. and his parents here: www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=884952.

1 comment:

Susan Petersen said...

Great story, Paula! Thanks for sharing this one. You really had me going there!