Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Thanksgiving Edition

 From Randy over at Genea-Musings:

 Hey genea-philes ... it's SATURDAY NIGHT again - time for more GENEALOGY FUN!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Think about the answers to these questions:

a.  Which ancestor are you most thankful for, and why?

b.  Which author (book, periodical, website, etc.) are you most thankful for, and why?

c.  Which historical record set (paper or website) are you most thankful for, and why?

2)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own; in a comment to this blog post; in a Facebook status line or a Google Plus stream post.

Here's mine:

1-a:   This is a tough one!  I am thankful for so many of my ancestors for different reasons!  I guess I will have to choose my maternal grandfather, Charles Morgan "Pop Pop" Tapley (1907-1973) because he was the one who sparked my interest in genealogy.  It was his steno pad full of family charts and information that I inherited after he died.  Those pages (which I still have and cherish, of course!) have grown into a database of over 3,800 individuals with additional notes on many of them. 

1-b:  I know I am going to sound like a stalker... or a kiss up... but honestly, my favorite author is Thomas MacEntee, author of the Geneabloggers blog, among others.  Not only did Thomas spark my interest in starting my own genealogy blog, but the information he has available for bloggers on Geneabloggers is invaluable!  From either Thomas or his blog, I learned how to write a Disclosure Statement, how to add a Posts by Topics roll up to my blog, and the importance of adding a research toolbox to assist my readers.  In addition, the links to thousands of other genealogy blogs and visiting them has expanded my knowledge base ten-fold!  I can e-mail Thomas anytime, and no matter how busy he is (and we all know he is extremely in demand), he takes the time to reply and answer my questions.

1-c:  The historical record I am most thankful for is the United States Census.  Even though many times it has incorrect ages and misspelled names, it has been invaluable in helping me find the location of an ancestor, or the names of children (or spouses!) I didn't know they had, or where they or their parents were born.  I have just learned to take the information "with a grain of salt" and use it as a starting point in my research.