Comments-on-William-Axsom-not-a-question

Question

On 4 Jul 2022 William Axsom wrote on Axsom-149:

I have absolute confidence in the fact that right now - as things are - there is a LOT of discontinuity in some dates, timelines, (on my pages) and it'll all get cleaned up on the phase after all this data entry - scan in and post all the documents, photos, etc. I have on hand. Because my Aunt Edna spent decades of her life working on the whole county's genealogy - and I have inherited the Duty of keeping her work going, I have at least 6, more often 9-10 generations worth of stuff for about 8-10 family lines/surnames to post here. Much of it is my hand scribed copies I made of the copies Edna passed out to her siblings - which is my mother's copy. Phase 3 is a complete name-by-name search for every headstone I can find to add to this database. Phase 4 is the long Journey back into the Tribal and Slave Rolls and pinning in the many Native Women, and even a few men, married onto "pruned, stumped-off" branches - back into our/my history and genealogy. A T'Saligi (Cherokee) Elder [I don't have family permission to use his name here -yet, sorry] took me under his wing as his last-in-life pupil and I got a great Teaching from him. Unlocking the riddles of 'dark family secrets' is another thing I've found I have a knack for; such things also happen to be deliberately induced "familial amnesia" about what is - in its time - something seen to be a social shame of some kind. Two such issues had plagued Edna and some others for years before it was resolved - one on both sides of my lines: Dad's side - Grandma Nellie Hall was common-law wed to Charles and had 4-5 boys with him - one who was my Pap-pa Axsom. Turned out there was a logically illogical reason for her seething hatred and disgust for Pap-pa, his kids, especially the boys, and a Demon-Devil Spirit towards me also. Grandma had such a mean streak that she actually legally wed Joseph Axsom - who was Pap-pa's uncle or 2nd cousin - the age-group of an uncle. It was literally tit-for-tat because Charles had another legal wife and a few kids by her as well; naming kids in a 'back-n-forth-after-you-no-after-you with boys' names - one part of the reason we don't see much for middle-names in the documents. So, some of Pap-pa's brothers, although they still have the same surname, they're still just 1/2 siblings. I never could understand that as a kid. It often happened that Charles' & Joseph's records got confused - and no one bothered to sort it out. Mom's side - was the ages-old question - when/where/how/why did the surname get changed from Legan to Leggins? The "cool" story was an ancestor had committed a murder and had to fly the coop - with sheriff and bloodhounds hot on his trail too, none-the-less. I don't think anyone ever bothered to delve deep into the "outlaw ancestor" until I couldn't put it down once I got it. The real story is far less dramatic, and WAY pettier than it was anything else. The Charles whose name kept coming up with Legan and Leggins - and there were a father-son in a row named Charles, it was confusing as heck. One set of his grandparents turned out to be 1st-cousins, something that wasn't uncommon in any way for the time - especially when it was so distant a '1st' connection that is probably beyond a 2nd degree. I call them mystery-shame-ghosts, are most all of them are because of what we'd call trivial and petty today - hopefully. On Mom's side - at the end of the Civil War there was an Ancestor who was a minister/farmer and along with his wife, (then wives), took in/'adopted' War Widows and helped them get remarried and such. It wasn't possible for a woman to wed without father's consent up till he was dead or the daughter a spinster, and when just about all the fathers were killed along with their husbands - and darn near an entire generation of young men and boys - options were not abundant for another man's used stuff - so to speak in the parlance of the times. Fortunately, there was also an abundance of young-ish War Veterans were missing limbs and all sorts of other parts - especially their Minds most of the time. It was these survivors that most of the Civil War Widows married and did their best from there. It's a very cool piece of actual history, as well as a personal piece of our/my genealogy. Making up new documents for new lives became a nice little cottage industry, especially when pretty much everything put down before the War was burnt and/or blown away in a million different manners. Widows as nurses becoming war-brides founded a whole new crop(s) of family lines for us to wade through - post-war periods. It's my pleasure, my honor, and my duty, to work on this stuff. Especially since I have the educational background and modern resources to put to it, given I cannot do much else until the docs figure their stuff out - I'm de-facto medically retired. Point being, ALL I have is endless hours and custom-built computer for the workload. I LOVE questions! Especially when a historically appropriate answer/solution is what the problem/puzzle requires. I've no interest in "doing" other folks' genealogy for them (I'd probably be too expensive to hire. LBAO!), I am definitely willing to help folks get going on their own - sometimes it's just those first few pieces a body needs anyway, then they can have the fun for themselves. I cannot imagine approaching genealogy in the 21st century without a strong foundation in the history itself our kin were always partaking in making. I'd be lost for sure.

Comments

William,

Welcome to WikiTree. I want to respond to this part of your post above: "I have absolute confidence in the fact that right now - as things are - there is a LOT of discontinuity in some dates, timelines, (on my pages) and it'll all get cleaned up on the phase after all this data entry - scan in and post all the documents, photos, etc. I have on hand."

I would encourage you to consider a different approach. Many of us have done something similar to what you're considering-- create a slew of profiles without sources with the honest intention of going back and adding sources and addressing inconsistencies. But life happens, and as a result, WikiTree has tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of profiles without sources, without dates, without relationships. 

It took me TEN YEARS to clean up the original profiles I bulk-uploaded when I first started at WikiTree. I wish I'd done it differently. 

So please consider adding sources, and addressing inconsistencies as you go, not later. 

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That's weird, my email reply to you didn't post up here, huh. LoL! After sleeping on it, I'd decided to alter my approach before I read your msg this morning. I'm fortunate that I have time in abundance, but that's no excuse for being sloppy; figuring out how to scan in stacks of documents at a time really speeds things up! Now - to figure out how/where to upload the files, ....