I am amazed at the number of people who were interested in my post about genealogy being a dangerous hobby. The hits on my blog multiplied before my eyes. It made me think that maybe this is a subject that needs to be examined.
I know that recently I have seen warnings in articles about DNA testing. Basically it says that you must be prepared to see results that you didn't expect or might be upsetting.
So maybe the world of genealogy isn't as squeaky clean as we would like to think it is. We tend to see our ancestors as the most wonderful, loving people on the face of the earth. After all we are their descendants, and we have inherited all of their wonderful characteristics.
As genealogists, we come across family folk lore all the time and we treat it as a clue to a documented fact, but maybe the rumor is more accurate than the actual vital record.
A birth certificate only proves that the mother and child are related. If the mother is married the husband becomes the child's father, whether it is true or not. Once his name is on the birth certificate he becomes the father.
See not everything is cut and dried. So once again we have the danger of genealogy research, but this time it is not because we have a group of people who don't want to be connected to their ancestors.
Instead we have a family member who might know the truth about a situation in the family and doesn't want to expose those family secrets. And how far will that person go to protect the family?
So do you expose those DNA results or not?
Sometimes genealogy can be dangerous hobby!!
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