|
Pages: [1] 2
|
 |
|
Author
|
Topic: Why do we do family research? (Read 916 times)
|
Luzzu
RootsChat Veteran
Posts: 953
|
I found this. I don't know who wrote it or when but I think it says a lot.
"We are the chosen. My feeling is that in each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow those who went before know and approve. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called as if it were in our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So we do.
In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told my ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us."? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.
It goes beyond just documenting the facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference, and saying I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us, that we might be born who we are, that we might remember them. So we do.
With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence because we are them and they are us. I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation, to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those, young and old, to step up and put flesh on the bones."
Having a sentimental moment whilst taking a break from searching. 
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Buck, Staffs & Hants; Crummett, Norfolk & Burnley; Osborne, Cornwall & Burnley; Haigh/Hague, Manchester & Todmorden; Grant, Manchester & Ireland; France, Manchester & Yorkshire; Shackleton, Burnley, Yorkshire & Australia;
|
|
|
Annette7
RootsChat Veteran
Posts: 785
|
Luzzu
That is so beautiful and so true. I'll think of myself a little differently now - I'm the storyteller of the tribe! With all the little ones in my family I wonder who the next one will be.
Annette
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Scopes (One-Name Study - Worldwide) Suffolk - Grist, Knights, Bullenthorpe, Watcham Scotland - Spence, Horne, Cowan, Moffat London - Monk Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Census Information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk |
|
|
Ruskie
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 5268
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
|
I agree, that is very sentimental. I see it slightly differently. 
Yes, there is often someone in a family who is interested in family history - 'the storyteller'.
- I see family history as one huge puzzle to be solved.
- I am nosey and want to know who they were, where they lived, what they did, what historical events they witnessed.
- I am interested in the past.
Some bravely sailed for months to far off countries for better (or different lives) for themselves and their families. I wonder if any of them regretted the move. Were their lives better? Comparing what some of them did there and here, life seemed much the same for many of them ie hard.
I have:
- the unforgiving religious zealots
- the violent womanizer
- the drunks
- some not very likeable characters
Did they think of future generations? Did they want to be remembered? I doubt it.
Cynic 
But I still have a lot of fun with the search.
[PS. I might change some of this if I get shot down in flames .... ]
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
JustKia
RootsChat Aristocrat
Posts: 1118
|
For me I think it's in part wanting to "belong", to be part of a family.
My immediate family is very small. My parents divorced when I was only a toddler so I never really knew the relatives on my mother's side.
I also have problems that may mean we won't be able to have children of our own and that also bought home to me how much our ancestors mean - because without descendants who will have an interest in our history?
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
MARLOW/JECOCK - Northamptonshire/Warwickshire : WIMBUSH/JUSTICE - Oxfordshire/Warwickshire : SCALES/BRIDGES/ENGLISH/JARMAN - Suffolk : GARRETT/GIBBS - Warwickshire : DEVOS - Scotland (Aberdeen)/France(Dunkerque) : MURRAY - Ireland(Down)/Scotland(Lochs) : TIGHE/TREACY - Cork Stanley Charles SCALES b.1899 - Where are you? *** Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk |
|
|
AnneMc
RootsChat Aristocrat
Posts: 1116
|
I had always was interested in history and loved listening to my grandmother and her sisters talking about the early days of their childhood
Then we moved to Canada and when my two children were little I realized that they were the first generation of our family to be born in Canada and I decided that I would research our families so they and their children would know about their English Roots
Cheers
Anne
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Yorkshire - Thompson. Savage, Morris, Richardson, Frankish, Mintoft, Myers, Barker, Hotchkiss
Shropshire - Hotchkiss
Derbyshire - Hardwick, Barker, Marples
Lancashire - Winstanley, Morton
|
|
|
Kevinshouse
RootsChat Veteran
Posts: 736
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
|
What a lovely thread. I started to do my family history 10 years ago and I would warn anyone starting there will be sad things, scandal!, but most of all wonderful discoveries. I cannot believe all this history was there just waiting to be discovered, my sister helps me (although she lives 300 miles away from me).
I feel I was chosen to do this, maybe I am nosey, its like your very own soap opera. One of the most sad things I found was last year that my 5 x g grandmother had died in Suffolk at the age of 21, she had just one child William who my family is of course descended from.I have visited Suffolk a few times since I found out both my parents family have lines that came from Suffolk. When I think that she was younger than my own two daughters. I stood in the grave yard where she is buried (there is no marked grave) it was a beautiful sunny day and thought if it wasn't for me researching all this nobody would have ever known about her.
I started searching my husbands family about 5 years ago because I want our daughters to have their whole family history.
Kind Regards Susan
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
annieoburns
RootsChat Senior
Posts: 277
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.natio
|
This is a bit from a book (The House by the Thames by Gillian Tindall)
But the vast mass of men and women in every time do not leave behind them either renown or testimony. … almost all of them have passed away from human memory and are still passing away, generation after generation.
“… and some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.”
Witness to the living busy complex beings that many of these vanished ones were tends to be limited to fleeting references on pages of reference books that are seldom opened. At the most, there may be a handwritten note or a bill, perhaps a Will, a decorative trade-card, a few lines in a local newspaper or in a report from a long-obsolete committee, possible an inscription on a tomb.
Scant evidence you may say of lives as vivid and as important to the bearers as our own are today to us. But by putting these scraps together, sometimes with luck, something more coherent is achieved. Pieces of lost lives are genuinely recovered. Extinct causes clamour for attention. Forgotten social groups coalesce again. Here and there a few individual figures detach themselves from the dark and silence to which times has consigned them. They walk slowly towards us. Eventually we may even see their faces.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Wiffen, Utton, Clark, Spires, Frisby, Raybould, Charlton, Green, (England)
Flood, Daly, Doran, Mc Kercher, Gardiner, (Ireland/England)
Reid, Burns (Ireland)
McGourty, Daly (Ireland/America)
|
|
|
MarieC
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 3354
In Queensland, Oz
|
That's a really lovely, and very true, piece of writing, Annie! Thank you for posting it.
MarieC
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Martins in London and Wales, Lockwoods in Yorkshire, Hartleys in London, Lichfield and Brighton, Hubands and Smiths in Ireland, Bentleys in London and Yorkshire, Denhams in Somerset, Scoles in London, Meyers in London, Cooks in Northumberland
|
|
|
stonechat
RootsChat Aristocrat
Posts: 1600
|
There are two sides I believe
- Findind the ancestor's information
- Telling a story
Finding the information is both discerning the basic dates, and then looking for more details to flesh out this more
Telling the story is not just a question of letting them tell the story - they are not here and can't do that.
Like it or not we are telling it from a viewpoint of 21st Century with maybe certain prejudices with are common to the time and some prejudices peculiar to us as individuals
We use our knowlege and intuition to imaging the course or timeline of their lives, so we can present a kind of narrative. We can never be entirely right but not to try is surely not an option
Bob
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Douglas, Varnden, Joy(i)ce Surrey, Clarke Northants/Hunts, Pullen Worcs/Herefords, Holmes Birmingham/USA/Canada/Australia, Jackson Cheshire/Yorkshire, Lomas Cheshire, Lee Yorkshire, Cocks Lancashire, Leah Cheshire, Cook Yorkshire, Catlow Lancashire NOTE I have moved my website to http://www.cotswan.com |
|
|
Les de B
RootsChat Veteran
Posts: 872
|
My reason started because of my surname - de Belin.
All through my schooling, growing up and present day, people would always ask me, was I French? My standard reply was ( as told to me by my parents), my great grandfather was a French sea captain, sailed to Australia, and married my great grandmother. Brief, but that was my answer to my surname for over 40 years.
After 10 years of research, I can now reply, my great grandfather was born in England in 1842. He was an able seaman on the Panama/Austraila shipping route for 20 years, and apparently jumped ship in Australia, marrying one of the passengers (my g grandmother).
French connection? My gg grandfather was also born in England, 1789, but with the surname Belin. He joined the church, lived in France for 10 years, before returning to England, and changed his name to de Belin.
Now, for the rest of the family surnames? That's another story.......................................... 
Les
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
de Belin, Swindail, Willcock, Williams, Moore, Watts, Searjeant, Watson, McCready, Reid, Spink, de Lancey, Van Cortland, and of course, Smith!
|
|
|
RichardK
RootsChat Senior
Posts: 407
Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
|
I agree with Stonechat - I generally think of those two parts as:
- fitting the jigsaw together; and
- filling in the pictures on each piece.
For some, they try and get the jigsaw as large / far back as they can, but aren't too fussed how much detail each piece of the jigsaw shows. I think it's more fulfilling to concentrate on a smaller part of the jigsaw but really try to get the clearest picture possible of the person that each piece represents.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Kelly, Birkenhead & Co. Kildare
Marshall, Luton & area
Reid, Co. Kildare & Dublin
Cox, Barnack Northamptonshire
Edwards, Pagham, Sussex & area
Scott, Roxburghshire & Perthshire
Mitchell, Warwickshire
Savage, Hampshire
|
|
|
Nick29
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 3476
|
I see it as a huge puzzle - one which I will never finish, because you always have to go back "just one more generation" 
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
MarieC
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 3354
In Queensland, Oz
|
Agree with Stonechat and Nick. I don't expect ever to finish, Nick, for the same reasons!
Les, that's a very interesting story! I had assumed you must have a French background. Good to know what actually happened!
MarieC
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Martins in London and Wales, Lockwoods in Yorkshire, Hartleys in London, Lichfield and Brighton, Hubands and Smiths in Ireland, Bentleys in London and Yorkshire, Denhams in Somerset, Scoles in London, Meyers in London, Cooks in Northumberland
|
|
|
Les de B
RootsChat Veteran
Posts: 872
|
Les, that's a very interesting story! I had assumed you must have a French background. Good to know what actually happened!
MarieC
The surname de Belin is more like "de Facto" French
Les
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
de Belin, Swindail, Willcock, Williams, Moore, Watts, Searjeant, Watson, McCready, Reid, Spink, de Lancey, Van Cortland, and of course, Smith!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pages: [1] 2
|
|
|
|
|
