A Mind Boggling Passion

"Generations pass like leaves fall from our family tree. Each season new life blossoms and grows benefiting from the strength and experience of those who went before,"
~Heidi Swapp~

Anyone who knows me for five minutes knows that one of my great passions (I have two) is genealogy.  I have no idea where my desire to know my roots originated.  Certainly, no one else in my family has the drive I do to uncover family skeletons.  Oh, they're interested in hearing about what I find but they don't care to do the research.

Maybe it was born in me.  I had an interest in my family history while still a teenager.  Or maybe it comes from not knowing my biological father until I was an adult.  I knew who he was - his name, that is - but I didn't know WHO he was - what he looked like, his life story, his personality, his interests, etc.  It's really funny, but until a newly-learned about cousin from his side of the family sent me a photo of my paternal grandparents, I'd never given them a second thought.  Dad was the only one who mattered.  I never even considered the possibility that I had paternal relatives.  But I digress.

I had a thought this morning - well, actually, I remembered something I'd read somewhere - that it's nothing short of phenomenal that everyone who's alive today has literally thousands of years of ancestors.  When you think about that in basic terms and consider the numbers of people who died without descendants, it's amazing.  Their biological lines ended.  When you consider that so many women used to die in childbirth and the high rate of infant mortality, it's a wonder any of us are here today.  The odds were certainly against our survival.  Our ancestors must have been some pretty strong people.

I used to think it would be cool if I'd find out that I'm descended from royalty but, truthfully, while that might be exciting, I think it's far more interesting to learn about the horse thieves and bank robbers.  Everybody wants to be descended from someone famous, I suppose, even that someone was less than a model citizen.  One of my ancestors was tried for treason during the Revolutionary War.  He took the side of the British and acted upon his convictions by blowing up his neighbor's ships in the harbor.

Someone once asked me how I would know when I was finished tracing my roots.  I suppose the meaning behind that question was to ascertain my goal.  My answer, meant to be funny, was "when I get back to Adam and Eve".  Truthfully, I'm finding that I reach a degree of satisfaction when I get the point that an ancestor came to America and from where.  So far, I've reached that point with a few lines but still have a few more to go.  At that point, I'm guessing that my satifaction will be short-lived and I'll need to know about my homelands...  It's a passion with no end but one that absolutely intrigues me to that same no end.