Who's Next?

I've managed to make some headway in getting more of my relatives onto my website, but I've also just barely scratched the surface.

In the past few days I have managed to add Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland and Peter Fonda who all have their own little place on my family ancestry site. It may not seem like much, but the amount of research that I do before I write each person's small biography can be quite extensive, especially for those people who have done so much.

My attempt at writing a brief biography for each of my ancestors and/or living relatives, distant or not, is with the idea of providing enough information to do them justice, while not overloading people with too many facts and figures. In some cases, this takes a lot of editing on my part. Wherever possible I also like to add my own personal thoughts & comments about the individual for whom I am creating the page.

In the case of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, there is so much information about both of these ladies that it is overwhelming. Not only did Judy accomplish a lot in her short life, as has her daughter Liza, there is a lot of misinformation floating around that I needed to sort through. Trying to apply the same methods that I use when determining who I am related to when I write these pages takes time; fact checking is tedious, but in my opinion, very necessary. I would not want to be yet another person who disseminates non-factual information. Besides, if any of my living distant relatives ever read their own page on my website, I'd be horrified if I published incorrect information! That's a long-shot, I know, but a consideration that I keep in mind while writing.

My website now has well over 100 family members listed on it, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. I could easily double or even triple that number if only I could manage to string together enough hours to do the research and complete the pages. I'm not complaining - not everyone has so many interesting relatives that they can write about - I just hope that I don't run out of time.