Genealogy Discoveries

In my spare time, I have been on a genealogical expedition in a quest for finding the first Allison male to come to America. I was born Richard Mark Allison and my name changed when I was 14 to Richard Allison Johnson. My biological father, Billy Joe Allison died when I was a senior in high school and there has always been this black hole in my life as a result. I have always wanted to know more about my Allison family, so I decided to begin an expedition to find out.

There are several sources on the Internet where you can get information, but most of them charge you money every month. Personally, I am not a big fan of paying for information when I might be able to find it for free. There are some free sites that I used to gather the information. One of them is www.familysearch.org and another is www.rootsweb.com which is the free side of www.ancestry.com. Yet another free site that was very helpful is www.findagrave.com.

With all of these sites, you have to keep in mind that some of these records can be a little inaccurate with misspellings of names. In addition, back in the days of when the census people came around and beat on the door, then took down what you told them and wrote it on a piece of paper. A lot of times, the people being questioned didn't want to give the government their full names, so they would just say R.M. Allison, instead of Richard Mark Allison, for example.

Also, on the Find a Grave site, there are these wonderful people who go through cemeteries and take pictures of the graves. Sometimes, they are family descendants and sometimes they are not. They may not know that another relative who died might be in a different cemetery and the link is missing from Find a Grave. I know in my own search, a lot of times the parents would be listed with some of their children, but not all of them. This could be because they are still alive, or it could be that the person who put the information on Find a Grave didn't know that there was more children.

Anyway, I was able to find the first Allison male to come to America who was born in 1675 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. After that, I was able to trace the family tree all the way down to me. It was an arduous task, but it has been well worth the effort. That black hole that I had is filled in a little bit now.

I discussed doing genealogical research in my book, Meet Wally Street. The Reason You're Stupid as being a good thing to do if you are retired and bored to tears. If you need any pointers or tips, then don't hesitate to ask me.