It’s spring or at least I thought it was. If it really is spring, maybe I’ll get some rest. You know the dead of winter is when people work on family genealogy. I’m always glad to help if I can, so I get lots of questions and requests of various sorts.

Besides genealogy the other topic we are hearing so much about is addiction. Do these two go together? Maybe. A cousin by marriage, Dr. Ike Lassiter, sent me some signs, and I thought I'd pass them on to you so you can do a self-check. Although I understand that food, drug and alcohol addictions are very difficult, so far there is NO CURE for a genealogy addiction. SORRY AND HAPPY RESEARCHING YOUR FAMILY.

Here are some signs and symptoms to tell if you are addicted to genealogy. Not all of these are required for diagnosis:
Your vacation planning includes directions to local graveyards.
You have started referring to your children and grandchildren as your “descendants.”
When friends ask about your genealogy research, your family says, “Don’t get him/her started.”
You read the obituaries in the newspaper before the headlines on the front page.
Your kitchen and dining room tables are covered with books, notebooks, and documents. It has been this way for a year or two.
You check Ancestry.com and other genealogy websites more often than you do your own email.
You can recite the marriage, birth, and death dates of ancestors going back ten generations, but have forgotten your anniversary, your own birthday, and have lost track of what day it is today.
You have accumulated more genealogy books than can be found at your local library.
The last thing you read was the data from the U.S. Census.

Ike says, "Genealogy begins as an interest, becomes a hobby, continues as an avocation, takes over as an obsession, and in its last stages, is an incurable disease."

As an aside, the largest genealogy I have encountered in my many, many years of research is “The Descendants of John Hubbs” by Ruth Gibbs Hart and Karen Cooper. The book has more than 1,100 pages and is indexed. The book is out of print, but I understand the publisher does accept some special orders.