When I first started looking at my family's history, I had always thought that my roots were in the North East of England. That was where my grandparents lived; where my father went to school and to college; and where my family always went when they went "home".
After my mother's death in the mid-1970s we found that she had left lots of notes about the family on little bits of paper. Who were all these people? Putting the jigsaw together revealed ancestors from the North West as well as the North East of England; from East Anglia; and from the South. A patchwork of country landowners and illiterate farm labourers, paper manufacturers and marine engineers, builders and farmers, public house owners and Methodist teetotallers.
Research has taken me to County Record Offices from the North of England to the South. When I started you could still handle the original parish records and vellum documents. No longer. Original documents were first replaced by fiche and microfilm. These are now being replaced by on-line scanned documents on the internet.
In place of paper files and Family Record Sheets we now have data files on our computer. A Family Record Sheet can be printed out at the (metaphorical) touch of a button. A 3.5 inch hard drive now holds the equivalent of many feet of shelf space.
The world also has shrunk. We might have known of a cousin or two who had emigrated. In those days, if we were still in contact with them at all, a letter probably involved a large payment for a small postage stamp. An international phone call would cost a month's wages, if the international operator could put you through at all. This has all changed as well. The world wide web has brought us into contact with many more cousins; our emails go back and forward 24/7 and Social Media has completely changed the way we seek each other out.
So it has been change, change, change since I started. Interesting enough in itself.
But I have other reasons for continuing.
There's the excitement of the chase; the unexpected connection; the pleasure of knocking down a brick wall; the satisfaction when you find which of several Joe Bloggs in Lower Mandeville is yours.
Then there's the feeling that you are leaving something for future generations. I found a chart of a branch of the family tree made by a cousin in 1903. If anyone appreciates my work as much as I did his, it would all have been worthwhile.
Finally, theres the fascination of the family stories that are revealed. In some cases they are dramatic - murder, mayhem and sudden death. Others are the stories of great success, in business and the professions.
I hope to bring you a few ideas based on my experiences. I may add some of those stories. I'll probably raise as many questions as I give answers.
Let's see how it goes.
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.
Ecclesiasticus Chapter 44, verse 1
