"We all carry, inside of us, people who came before us."
~Liam Callanan~
A few years ago, I was cleaning out a junk drawer and came across a note I had written when I was about 18 or 19. As I read the short note, I clearly recalled the day I wrote it. I was at my grandparent's home and was asking my grandmother who her parents were and who my grandfather's parents were. As she answered, I would go up another generation: "who were their parents?" That very short conversation ended when after only a couple of generations, she started saying "I don't know". Everything she told me, I wrote down and closed the note. I was surprised to find it all those years later. By the time I found the note, I was deep into tracing my ancestral roots.
So why mention this now? Because someone I love very much asked why it matters who our ancestors were and what's the big deal with genealogy. I certainly can't speak for every genealogist in the world though I do think most of us have some common desires that urge us on. For me, it started with a curiosity and ballooned from there.
I remember the very first time I ever did any actual physical research. I wanted to find obituaries for my maternal great-grandparents - I don't even remember why I wanted to find them. My mother, oldest son and I all went to the public library and looked through old newspapers. I don't remember which of us found the first piece of documentation that those people existed but between the three of us, we found all four obits. I also don't remember why, but we moved on to census records and found the record for one of my great-great-grandfathers. I was stoked and the seed was planted. I had no clue what my goal was or if I even had a goal. Years later someone asked how I would know when I was finished. I replied that I'd be finished when I got back to Adam and Eve. Until then, there's always another branch up to research.
Through the years, I'd do a little research here and there but really didn't know what I was doing. In the beginning, all I cared about was names and dates. I'm more into learning about the individual people and their stories now.
Through trial and error (and a lot of reading on genealogy websites and message boards) I started to figure things out. The very first post I did on one of those message boards hit paydirt. A fifth cousin ("not removed or anything!" she exclaimed) replied to my post and opened several generations for me. Her father had lived with someone I actually knew from my childhood. This cousin told me where my great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother were buried and even took me to their graves. I learned that day to love cemeteries and the information they held - both on tombstones and in the records held in the offices.
After I retired, my hobby slowly became an obsession. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I got more excited over a birth, marriage or death certificate than most people get over diamonds and Ferraris. I learned to read every column on a census record to discover the various occupations my ancestors held (does anyone have a clue what a Daguerreotype Artist is????). I even learned from one census record that my maternal grandfather's grandparents lived across the street from each other and have decided in my mind that that's how his parents met. I can't be sure, of course, but it makes sense to me.
I began dissecting every bit of information on death certificates. Through them, I've learned that many of my ancestors suffered from some of the same health concerns. Dropsy, apoplexy, uremia and malaria were common causes of death in the earlier years; cancer and heart disease in the later years.
Through the generosity of other family genealogists, I have collected photos of some of my ancestors and have been surprised on more than one occasion with the family resemblances between individual family members who lived decades apart. Though there are many apples and many trees, I've learned that the apples don't fall too far from the trees.
I've learned much about history (and now know why geography is important). I learned about the roles of men and women in the early days of our country. I learned that when a man died and left a wife and children under the age of 21 that those children were considered infants and were often appointed a male guardian by the courts - even though their mother was still alive.
I learned about slavery and was surprised to learn that only the very rich kept slaves. I grew up believing everyone had slaves so this revelation was especially eye-opening for me. Though I never actually researched which of (or even if) my ancestors kept slaves, I know that some did because they were plantation owners. I also learned that some did not but hired free negroes to work their fields.
I learned about the roles my ancestors played in the various wars during the early days of our country. During the Revolutionary War one was tried for treason because he sided with the British and went so far as to blow up his neighbor's boats in the harbor. In the Civil War my ancestors fought on the side of the Confederacy. Neither of these facts embarrasses me nor saddens me. Times were what they were and everyone during those times had their reasons for choosing their side of an issue.
So, back to why this is important. Certainly it doesn't rank up there with any of the hot issues of the day like our economy, gas prices, the wars in the Middle East, border security and other issues of that magnitude. But, in my opinion, it's important individually. Even in the Bible, God gave us an accounting of Adam and Eve's descendants (anyone remember all the "begots"?) so it must have some importance for us. I think it's up to each individual to decide how important it is to him or her.
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