Do you want to know who you are – or do you want to know who you are?
People start researching their family history for many reasons. But, at the core of it, everyone just wants to know the same thing: who they are and where they came from.
Most people will know something about their family origins. Many, for instance, will easily recite - almost without thinking - that parent X or grandparent Y was born at this time; they did this, or that for a living; and they came from Z. Or they’ll eagerly recount a whole swathe of well-worn family anecdotes that have been passed down through the generations. For some, that may be enough. For others, however, it’s just a starting point.
Researching our family history isn’t just about being able to robotically recite a few random facts and figures, with a few well-worn family anecdotes thrown in for good measure - that no one’s ever thought to dispute or verify. Neither is it about getting as far back as you can, as fast as you can. Really knowing who you are and where you came from is far more nuanced than that.
Finding out about those who came before us is putting meat on the bones of history – both our own and history in general.
Research is about
finding ours and our family’s place the world.
figuring out how and why we ended up where we are;
tracking and tracing all of those long heard family tales – and making sense of them, either to prove or disprove them once and for all;
answering, or trying to answer, all of those niggling little questions we all start with initially – then all of the new ones that come up along the way;
learning about and, hopefully, visiting the places our ancestors came from - seeing where they were born; where they lived; where they married; where they had their families; where they worked; and, ultimately, where they died;
filling in the gaps in our knowledge and finding our family’s place in history - this can be interesting when the story ties in with what we learned at school;
finding out what was going on around them at the time. Why did they stay? Why did they leave? What and whom did they leave behind? And why did they never go back?
In short, it’s about asking questions you’d never even have thought of before you started this journey; and about really getting to know the people who got us here - bringing them back to life, so to speak.
This is largely why, for many researchers it can take years, or even decades to be satisfied that they’ve found as much as they’re ever likely to about one family line or another. For some that never happens – and they find that what may have started out as an intermittent hobby they dipped into occasionally, has turned into lifelong passion. Few serious family historians ever consider their research complete or finished – especially these days, when there’s always something new being digitised, or something unexpected being uncovered in some dusty archive somewhere.
In an ideal world, that’s how it should be. With the advent of modern technology some like to try getting as far back as fast as you can, which can be exciting - if the information is correct. The further back and the faster the better – so what if you take a few wrong turns along the way? Speedy researchers think you can do it all in a weekend, or over a couple of weeks or months. But you can’t, not really.
Consider this: even if you only go back 5 generations, you have: your 2 parents; your 4 grandparents; your 8 great grandparents; your 16 great great grandparents; your 32 great great great grandparents, and, your 64 great great great great grandparents…. that’s 126 people to research. And that’s without even taking into account any second or third marriages, say, or any of their siblings, other children or grandchildren! Would you really want to skim over all of them in the space of a weekend or a month or two? What would be the point of that? All it could possibly tell you in that space of time is a) a few scant details, and b) that there were 126 of them! It won’t tell you much about them at all – let alone their lives, or the social or political situation around them at the time. For that, you need to do a LOT of reading - and, if possible, a lot of travelling!
A researcher can find your family for you, and outline the social, historical and geopolitical events going on around them at the time to help put it all into context. This saves you time, and after that there really is no substitute for taking the plunge and looking into to some of their findings for yourself. Visiting the places they lived. Seeing the places they saw. The experience can be felt in your bones.
If there was one big piece of advice I’d give anyone, it’s this: to know yourself, you really have to walk in your ancestors shoes. They’re what helped bring you to where you are now. Reading about and seeing where they came from, will really help you see how far you’ve come.
Doesn’t that deserve investing some time in?