All My Ancestors

This is scary.  Randy’s directions for this Saturday night are to “google yourself.”

I’m not sure I want to know what’s out there, but here goes.

Googling just my name “Debra O. Spindle” +Oklahoma yields 16 hits (it says 49 initially)–mostly postings on message boards, but some mention of a paper I presented in my former life (1993) as an academic.  Googling without my middle intial yields 124 hits, with 37 being the actual number of hits.  Since I’m listed in the telephone book, that one comes up as well.

A search in the Images portion of Google appears to generate more from my days as manager of the Downtown Library in the Metropolitan Library System–or as presenter at various programs–but still only 13 images.  However, I did find more when I omitted the place–a relatively “safe” thing to do with a name like Spindle.  In one post, I am a source.  Or, rather, one of the family group sheets I did on my mother-in-law’s family is cited.  I have no idea how this person got a copy, but it’s a good lesson–information never really disappears.   On the other hand, there must be at least one other Debra Spindle as a person by that names appears in a play entitled “Winning Combination” as Hal.

Several Debras in Google Videos, but none that were me–a Debra Beck music video and what appears to be a wrestler named Debra.  woo-hoo

Nothing comes up in the Google News.

A search using Google Blog search produced something interesting.  It’s a post at Rootbound in the Hills dated 12 April 2008, but it’s actually a reproduction of a query I sent to a newspaper in July 1988.  The author of this blog is evidently reprinting postings in a genealogy column that ran in 15 small papers in the Ozarks.  I remember this query because I got great results.  I was able to make contact with some of my 4th great-grandparents’ descendants–I’ve posted about this before.  Interesting to see a query sent to a newspaper, pre-internet, showing up online.  Here’s hoping I get some more hits.    As noted above, my number is in the book.

Randy indicates several blog collectors who are collecting his blog.  I’m doubting anyone is collecting mine, and I’m not even sure how to determine that.

So, that was fun.  No big surprises except perhaps how long old information–both academic and genealogic–sticks around.

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