Researching the family history

[Iain]

I know a few people here do this and I'm curious as to why. I have a certain amount of interest in it myself, but I've never considered really getting into it. The other day at work a co-worker was asking me about buying a laptop (knowing where the power button is qualifies me as an expert) and I asked what he wanted it for, told me that the wanted a more speedy machine, but it would be near solely used for researching his family history on the internet. Seems a lot of people are fascinated.

The BBC have been showing a programme where they research the family histories of celebrities called 'Who do you think you are?' Which seems a little odd for a title on this subject to me. What is the interest? I'm not critical, and I'm certainly not worried about 'ancestor worship' (as one of my friends regards the practice) but I wonder how much we believe that our ancestors shape us, and their stories define us, or whether it's purely curiosity about those that have come before.

Anyway, I'm off to Barcelona for a few days. Hope to see some good input when I get back. Have a good weekend all.

[Guest]

There are as many reasons for doing genealogy as there are people who do it.  Some want to qualify for membership in organizations open to descendants of veterans of the Revolutionary War (DAR) or the War Between the States (UDC) for example.  Some do it because thay are snooty and want to lord a fancy pedigree over their less blueblooded friends.  Some do it because it really personalizes history for them when they can place people they are descended from in various times and places that turned out to be significant.

I got started while in graduate school some thirty odd years ago.  It is a fascinating study to me, but then I was a history major as an undergraduate and was preparing for a career as a reference librarian. Genealogy is a hobby for enough people that a course in it in grad school seemed like a good idea to me, since I could plan on helping people with it when I went to work.  

I'm not descended from anyone really famous but following various members of my family on their treks through history has been a great deal of fun, and a real education in itself.  One quarter of my family (my mother's mother's people, the Cash family) have been having a family reunion every year for going on 40 years now.  That really puts family in perspective for me, but knowing who came before adds another dimension to it all.

lpl/nc

[CatsDieNow]

Well, my dad is obsesed with it.   It's basically an unsolvable puzzle that gets harder as you do more of it.  Dad prides himself on the number of names he has in his database and finding inaccuracies in other relatives' work.

He performed a "background check" on my boyfriend within hours of meeting him and decided he had a more colorful ancestry than we do.  Now I have to keep this guy - I think it would break dad's heart to lose out on adding all that stuff (including the DAR connection) to his geneology website.

[Tallpine]

Actually, what is more curious is the lack of interest in ancestry, compared to previous cultures and generations.  Surnames are relatively recent, and most people used to be identified as "John the son of William the grandson of James" etc ...

So I suppose the current ancestry interest is more of a return to the way things used to be, coupled with a sense of rootlessness in modern America.  And maybe the "graying" of the population - as you realize your life is nearing it's end, you start to think that the only things important are who you came from and who you leave behind.

FWIW, my dad's family were all common farmers all the way back to South Carolina in the late 1700s - apparently not a nobleman or politician in the lot.  I'm stuck there and still haven't made the leap across the Atlantic, but they seem to be of Scots and/or Scots/Irish derivation.  My mom's side were Scots/Irish via Pennsylvania.

Alba gu brath

[mfree]

Luckily, some family "groups" are common enough to have had books published about them. For instance, the Shields line here around Cades Cove has a book that outlines everything back to where one country doctor hopped a boat to the New World in the 1500's, puttered around Jamestown a bit, and headed south.

And of course, as with most Irish lineage, it's traced back to Milesius

[Guest]

I guess I wouldn't mind checking to see if my country ancestors had sex with their cousins or livestock.

[Guest]

For lots of reasons. History, puzzling together the various relationships, finding out where the nuts are.

[Stand_watie]

How will we figure out what our superpowers are if we don't know from which gods we decended? I don't want to be a sidekick!

[Guest]

There's a family tree online that claims to trace my family back to Jesus.

Hehe..I'm sure its documented and verified.

What's sad is you could tell the person believed it.