Mary Penner has written an article for the Albuquerque Tribune, Don’t do-over family research that may have already exist, about how you shouldn’t be so wrapped up in your own genealogy research, that you overlook others who might have covered your family or another that you’ve been researching:
I looked again at the title page. Who was this stranger who had written a book and put my name in it? After some digging and calculating, I discovered that the author was the wife of my great-great grandfather’s brother’s great-grandson.
Sound confusing? It was to me, too; I didn’t even know that my great-great grandfather had a brother.
Thousands of genealogy researchers publish their family histories each year just like the one I found in Salt Lake City. After years of research, genealogists want to compile what they’ve discovered, and occasionally distant relatives, like myself, will happen across their work and be amazed at what they find.