I remember during World War II reading about or hearing about those in various European Countries who collaborated with the enemy and were hated traitors to their own people. For many years, the word collaborate was a dirty word in my mind.
But now, in a different time and a different context, I am beginning to embrace the word as one that will provide great potential for genealogical researchers. My particular research has been nearly at a standstill for several years as I have had time-consuming administrative duties as the Director of the Library. I know very well that I should not use my administration duties as an excuse to cease research on my ancestral families. I’m sure those waiting for me to find them would not accept that excuse.
The Church Leaders have been encouraging members to work together to research or find and to verify each others findings for many years. The problem has been that genealogists have too often been heads-down researchers and maybe too jealous of their work. They are afraid others will contaminate their detail and throw them off track.
It is a new era, and the church has developed a computerized program that will allow each of us to share our work in such a way as to be collaborating with assurances that if we don’t agree with a collaborator, we can view their documentation, and, if necessary, we can communicate with them and even reverse their input. With as many ways as we have to communicate in today’s world, there are very few reasons we can’t share our data, ideas and research results with as many others as possible. Not only is it a reasonable thing to do with the time restrictions most of us feel it seems to me to be a necessary thing to do. Collaboration is not a dirty word nor is a collaborator an enemy to our cause.
Because of a simple request I put in a popular message board many years ago, I received a letter from the least likely person in the world who was willing to collaborate with me on one of my difficult lines. This gentleman was a prisoner in the Huntsville, Texas, Federal Prison. His story is amazing to me, and I will try to present it in such a way that he will not be embarrassed. When he was a nineteen-year-old man, he became involved in a fist fight with another young man, and he, in a hot tempered rage, shot and killed his opponent. He was sentenced to many years in prison back in 1986, and he may be eligible for parole soon. At first he was resentful but then began to realize the seriousness of his offense and became repentant. The last twenty years he has tried to be a model prisoner and person and wanted to do something of value with his life and somehow became interested in family history. He is a not-too-distant cousin of mine. He has no access to a computer, but he is doing his research the old fashioned way, via letter writing. He became acquainted with a (yes, you guessed it) collaborator on the outside who did have access to all of the latest tools. Between the two of them, they have done some marvelous research with detailed documentation, including work on my direct line.
The collaborator happened to come across my message board request for help on my Martin Line. She shared my message with her friend in prison, and he started writing to me. Because of his lack of pressure for time, his informative and detailed letters are extremely long and single spaced, but every line has important documented data on it.
Now we are collaborating in a five-way group that has me more excited about family history than I have been for several years.
We never know who might become a collaborator, and we may come to feel like the lesser contributor because of the research skills and detail orientation of our collaborators. I already have a feeling of love and appreciation for this young man who has been self-reformed and who has become a contributor to a much greater cause than he may ever realize.