I talked with my 90 year old grandmother last night. At one point I told her that the children and I were researching family trees and were about to get started on her side of the family.
She paused for a moment and said "My mother used to say not to go looking too high up in the family tree because you might just find someone hanging from it."
I can't wait!
6 comments:
Congrats! Ancestry digging is a really fun hobby. I have been working on mine for a few years (I was brought up with a love of it from my mother) and you wont believe the things you find. As for mine? A captain that likely worked for the East India Trading Company and... drunkards... lots of drunkards. Hope you find something interesting!
Wow! Can't wait to see what kind of exciting things you find. My FIL spent a lot of time digging into his side of the family tree but nothing very exciting.
This is really a fun and interesting activity for the whole family. But how do we go about it? I mean, if I wanted to dig my ancestry, I'm not sure where to start! I hope I'll find some good resource from your research.
Lady R - I started by just googling my ancestors' names. You'd be surprised what you can find with just google. There so are many ancestry websites out there and quite a few of those are free. Once I got back beyond 100 years ago, I found that a lot of the work had already been done by other descendents and I just got to follow their rabbit trails.
There's nothing quite like reading the will of your great-great-etc.-great grandfather from 1620 or seeing a portrait of someone in your family from 1480. It has really helped my children get excited about history class.
The googling is helped if you have ancestors with strange names. It helps to weed out everyone else. We have Neighbor and Astronomies in our family tree, so when we got to them we knew we were still on the right path.
Good luck!
Yeah, you can find out interesting stuff. As in, stuff I'm now forbidden from telling my grandpa about, since he's 89 and everyone thinks it'll kill him. It makes it awkward when he has me research specific things and then asks me what I found. So now, I just smile and say I'm still digging. I have a feeling a few more skeletons are going to surface before I'm done!
Good for you for doing your own genealogy. Be warned; it is addicting.
As an amateur genealogist, may I make a suggestion to all interested? Start with the oldest (or someone who is ill) living relatives. (Don't wait thinking there will be time later.) Ask lots and lots of questions now. Ask if there are records that you can copy. Is there a family Bible with names and dates written in it? Always ask permission to look and copy. Respect a person wishes if that person doesn't want to answer questions. Often though, they will tell you something even if it seems irrelevant.
Here is the "kicker": WRITE or record the answers and any stories you hear - even if you don't believe the story or the people are related. If several people are in the room at the same time, each will hear the story in a different way.
Also, as someone else mentioned sometimes you have to be careful about sharing what you find. Some family members get extremely touchy about told there were thieves or deserters or murderers in the family or that their grandmother (or whomever) had an illegitimate child. (Worse is when someone asks you to research their family and insists that they're descended from someone famous, but you discover and can "prove" they really aren't. Ouch.)
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