Peering into the Past
One of man’s primary needs is to know where he comes from. Research has shown that people develop more positively when they know where their roots lie than when they are uninformed.
However, getting the information on your ancestry can be as difficult and treacherous as drilling HPHT wells. There is usually quite a lot of misleading information (usually gathered during family gatherings) and very few facts. Your job is to sift through the debris of ages and find the truth of where you come from.
Genealogy isn’t a new career. It’s been around for hundreds of years and was mainly used for the purposes of establishing royal descent or aristocratic origins. Later it became popular as a hobby as many people from all over the world tried to track down their ancestors. Some found that their roots lay with famous warriors and kings; others found that they have their beginnings with a parlour maid. For some the trail ends abruptly and seems impossible to pick up again.
No matter how you go about it, there is a lot of hard work involved in finding your ancestors. Although there are still many birth and death certificates on record, the further you go back in history, the fewer records were being kept. It is only in the instances of royalty and aristocracy that these records were kept meticulously and preserved for many generations.
Some people are fortunate to have an ancient family bible that has the family tree illustrated in it and it often leaves clues as to where to go to next. Here you will find that you have to research other families as well to establish your true ancestry.
In some families the family tree was recorded and preserved without the prompting of generations. Some commoners (who were exposed to such things and had some education) would put together pages of information detailing each birth, death and marriage. This, of course, makes your job easier.
However, the stories that were carried down through the ages are the ones with the most clues. They’re not always accurate accounts of ancestry, but they certainly describe the starting point and the route to follow from there. They also hold some interesting anecdotes for you to capture for future generations.
Whatever the reason for tracing your roots, the exercise will be arduous work and, often, very frustrating. However, whatever the information that you uncover, you are sure to find something worthwhile of your time and effort. You may even discover that there are links to other families that no-one even suspected.
Genealogy is fun, exciting and hard work that will tend to bring to the fore more questions before it gives you answers.