Find My Past Blog - Scott’s journey through genealogy: do yourself a huge favour and

[Family Tree Forum]

In this blog series, genealogical historian Scott Phillips invites us along on his journey through genealogy and shares some of the lessons he’s learnt along the way.

A friend asked me just the other day if I had any regrets about my genealogy work.* I thought about it for a moment and said that other than wishing I had started asking certain questions of every single member of my extended family back when I was about 5 years old, I really only had one regret and that is that it did not occur to me to connect with a genealogy mentor early on when I began this work.
One my most treasured mentors hard at work, while I play with the camera, in a Cornwall parish churchyard.

When I started my personal genealogy and family history work, I had the good fortune to be the first person in my family to undertake the development of a true family history and family tree.* I discovered that this good fortune put me in two places at the same time.* First, I was able to make many early and fairly easy discoveries about our family quickly and that really got me excited for this field.* Second, at the same it put me in a land that I was totally unfamiliar with.* I was flooded with new terms such as agnate, enate, matrilineal, patrilineal, and that almighty terrifying ‘second cousin, twice removed’!* I was searching records, documents, software programs, websites, and reading every ‘how to’ book I could find.* Just about when I found myself at the point that I felt as if I was about to drown, I finally took a step back and focused on getting organized and putting a system in place for my work.
While I was blessed to have (and still have) my 93 year-old Mum, our family matriarch, helping me out significantly with information, recollections, leads, stories, etc. it wasn’t until about my second year that I finally had the good fortune of connecting with my first genealogy mentor.
I say my first mentor, not because we parted ways.* Quite the contrary!* We are working together more now than ever before.* I say first only because I now have about six mentors in my genealogy work.* You see, in genealogy as in any complex subject, no one knows everything in every area.* When you look at an academic roster at a major University, you never find a Professor with a Ph.D. in ‘everything’.* You just don’t.* Instead you find Professors who specialize, focus, and study more and more about specific subjects.* So it is that I am blessed to have a mentor in Bohemian (Czech) genealogy, in Cornish history, Cornish genealogy, two specific parishes in Cornwall, palaeography, and Bohemian Freethought.* My mentors are the perfect combination of teacher, trainer, critic, cheerleader, questioner, and task-master.
Without the help of one of my mentors, I might have never found the information about my great Uncle, William Morrish Phillips, nor his gravestone pictured here in Houyet, Belgium.

In my past corporate career, I had mentors before I established Onward To Our Past® and they proved their value over and over again.* They taught me how to avoid mistakes, where the power structures lay, to calculate risk, whose ox was likely to be gored if I followed a particular path, how to bounce back from a failure, and much more.* Some of my mentors came and went, but the most valuable stuck with me and established strong and valued relationships.* I owe much of my corporate success to my mentors.* Plus one of the additional benefits of a good mentoring relationship is the day you, as the one being mentored, offer a lesson back to your mentor.* I believe that with luck and time, a good mentor relationship flows in both directions.* Some of my corporate career mentors remain as my closest advisors and friends even though our paths have diverged at this point.
In genealogy a mentor can do much the same for you if you choose wisely. So what should you look for in a mentor?* Here are my suggestions:
I have found that great mentors walk with you side-by-side.* They do not simply show you how to do something, or just tell you how to accomplish a particular task.* They coach, suggest, and observe as YOU do it.* They can offer advice that is sage beyond your personal years of experience in a given area, subject, or field.* They can suggest tried-and-true resources as well as direct you toward some hidden gems that may be far outside of the mainstream of thought and availability, but which have served them well in their careers.* They can alert you to potential pitfalls, troubles, and help keep you motivated when you find yourself confronting one of those inevitable brick walls.* Perhaps best of all, they understand you and your goals.* They are there to support you and are not in competition with you!
I have also found that often times what is true in personal relationships, and certainly is true in my now 38 year marriage, can be true in mentoring: Opposites Attract!* Keep in
My mentor even helped find this family gravestone, tucked ‘safely’ away behind the hoover in the storage cupboard!

mind that in mentoring we are not looking for a ‘yes man’, but we are looking for a teacher/coach/trainer.* If you mentor is too much like you it can lead to missed opportunities as you both might tend to look down the same paths and view the scenery from the same vantage point.* You want your mentoring relationship to be much more like a kaleidoscope, giving you all kinds of insights and views.
Remember and be prepared for the fact that true mentoring relationships don’t always ‘click’, so don’t be surprised or disappointed if you find that your first few attempts to establish mentoring relationships falter.* Like so many other things in life, it comes down to what I call ‘chemistry’.* It has to be the near-perfect mesh of interests, personalities, time, and styles.* Not easy things to match in any realm, but something that seems to me to be especially true in genealogy.* I used to tell my children when they were young and encountered a challenging relationship issue: “There are reasons God, in Her wisdom, made ice cream in chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and rocky road!”
If you are truly lucky and blessed your mentor might even become a friend.* A good mentoring relationship is like fish and chips.* Each one makes the other better and the combination proves to be a real winner, especially with a good dash of vinegar.
I hope you don’t wait to partner with a mentor or two, or more!
Scott Phillips is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past® genealogy services in Indiana, US. Scott calls genealogy his ‘sweetest passion’ and his wife calls it ‘our shadow’! Scott specialises in immigrant ancestry, especially from Bohemia (Czech Republic), Cornwall, the UK and Italy. In addition to joining findmypast.co.uk as a columnist, he is a regular genealogy contributor for Huffington Post United Kingdom, GenealogyBank.com and his own website, Onward To Our Past. You can follow Scott on his*Facebook page*and on his*website/blog


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