Sweet Girl has become interested in tracing her ancestry through an online website, and she has already found some cool facts about her family, particularly her dad's side. I think it's remarkable that she's interested, because it seems unusual for young people to care about their roots. It may be that both grandparents on her dad's side are deceased, and she didn't get to learn a lot about them while they were alive. She doesn't have a lot of contact with that side of the family, and her biological father is NO HELP at all, so she is wise to go the online route, where a lot of the work has already been done. For a fee, of course.
She didn't get this curiosity from me, because I have never been interested at all in tracing my family roots. First of all, with our family, I figure it's wise to let sleeping (and dead) dogs lie and not go digging too deep in the dung heap. Secondly, I've just never seen the point. So what if we can trace our roots back to the Mayflower or the Salem Witch Trials or some random serial killer? The only kind of ancestor I would really be interested in finding is one who unbeknown to me left me and my descendants a million dollars a day for life.
This is not to say that Sweet Girl (and others) SHOULDN'T be interested. I think it's fascinating that they want to dig into family histories. It's just not for me. Probably years down the road when I don't have anything else to do, I may regret not going to a little more trouble to find out about my ancestors. I'll have to take that chance, though.
If they had just been considerate enough to blog about their lives, it would be so much easier. See what a favor I'm doing Sweet Girl and all her descendants?
You're welcome.
2 comments:
With all my other nerdy qualities, I have no idea why genealogy doesn't appeal to me.
I have an aunt and uncle who did all the work on my father's side and bound the family history into a book, which is sorta cool.
I am really BIG into genealogy, but haven't really done any since I started working on my doctorate. And my situation is similar to her's (nothing from the paternal side so I had to start from scratch), but if she needs any resources - let me know. There are a lot out there and not all of them require a fee. I think the coolest thing I have from my research is a cousin I found, through genealogy research, sent me the original marriage certificate of my great, great grandparents (circa 1880). The county they lived in was destroying all the original documents because they were scanning everythin to go online, but she rescued it for me. Too cool.
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