Gene Notes

Some random and some not-so-random thoughts on family history.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Snowball Effect* - Or OCFRD**

I don't even know how it started. Except that I was looking at an obituary and trying to figure out if this person connected to any of the Percivals I knew were connected in Texas. First I found Sarah Etta Dunham Hart (see Monday's blog) and before I knew it, my research reached back in to Michigan and Illinois and Ohio. Ohio represented descendants of Simon Perkins Percival through his son, Norris Simon and then later through some of Simon's descendants in Illinois.  Norris Simon Percival, Sr. moved on to Texas, died there in 1933 and his line produced more Norris Simon Percivals. A grandson of Simon P. Percival, Charles Scofield Percival, produced a son named Stanley who died in Arizona. Another son, William, died in Illinois. To add confusion to the mix, I added another Charles to the Percival line, a son of William Oval Percival. Thanks to Ancestry, I now have several generations of births, deaths, obituaries, marriage notices, and burials to deal with. Big pile on my desk now to deal with.

*Snowball effect is a figurative term for a process that starts from an initial state of small significance and builds upon itself, becoming larger, and perhaps potentially dangerous or disastrous, though it might be beneficial instead. - Wikipedia.
**OCFRD - Obsessive Compulsive Family Research Disorder.

Copyright 2010, ACK for Gene Notes

5 comments:

  1. If I were going to use a geometric shape to name my kid, I think I'd pick Dodecahedron. Or Nonagon. Oval is maybe, third or fourth on the list.

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  2. Yeah. Some censuses he is just listed as Oval. Maybe it is a family name on his mother's side. Oval works in better with Snowball though.

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  3. You get obsessive and I get distracted but we both seem to end up doing that same thing. "and before I knew it..." Isn't it fun to just follow your nose and see where you end up?

    Pat at genealogygals.com

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  4. Pat, sometimes I get distracted while being obsessive.

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  5. Yeah, me too! And sometimes the other way around. I've always been obsessive about my family research but now find that I go off on tangents.

    Pat at genealogygals.com

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