Playing Detective
One of the most enjoyable parts of genealogy for me is playing detective. When I was a kid, I used to sit under the mimosa tree with an Agatha Christie novel and a box of Junior Mints and try to beat Hercule Poirot to the solution of a puzzle. Trying to pick out which clues mattered, where someone was lying, and what chain of events was most likely was a blast. Often when working on a genealogical puzzle, I find myself in a similar situation -- staring at information that is incomplete and conflicting and trying to figure out what really happened. Just the other day I spent hours on the simplest of questions -- when was the person born? -- and loved every minute of it. Are you a genealogy nut like me? Or does spending hours trying to figure out a person's birthdate just seem silly? Maybe I can convince you that it is fun by describing all the tips and tricks I used to get a (tentative) answer. First, of course, I gathered my evidence....
