One Rhode Island Family

1. You don’t have to have famous ancestors to enjoy family history.  Everyone has a story.  It doesn’t have to be in the history books … and if it’s YOUR ancestor’s story, it’s worth knowing.  And, eventually, you may find yourself wanting to write one of those history books yourself, and maybe you will.
2. The more you learn about your family history, the more you will want to learn.  I think what’s so addictive is that you feel these people want to be known.  They want their lives to be remembered, and so you hate to stop trying.
3. All the news does not have to be good news.  It’s ok to find bad stuff.  Almost more than anything, the bad stuff makes these people human, and certainly goes a long way to explain the strains on the contemporaries and the next generation.  It’s amazing what people can live through.  It’s amazing how much better things can be a generation later.
4. It combines all my interests into one hobby.  History – reading – writing – libraries – databases – families – antiques – photography – bookmaking. (note to self:  I need more exciting interests).
5. It has its own collectibles.  Having genealogy as a hobby means I can pursue one of my favorite pastimes, buying and reading books.  I do lean towards reference books, and I have done pretty well on eBay.   And hubby has an excuse to go to his workshop and make bigger bookcases.  What can I say we’re co-dependent.
6. It has its own vacations.   Seriously, genealogy cruises??  Graveyard forays around New England?  Conferences with hundreds of genealogists?  I’m there!
7. It’s like a puzzle.   When you are researching your ancestors it’s like the steps of an elaborate game.  You put the pieces together but they don’t fit.  You step back and look skeptically at other pieces, wondering if they’re the mis-shapen causes of the bad fit.  You re-group, back out and come in a different way; you try to match based on other criteria. You eagerly learn every method, every instruction for this game.
8. That Rhode Island history — was my history!  Religious freedom, escaping the puritanical rigidity in Massachusetts to live according to one’s own beliefs, being forced to walk out of Massachusetts into the wilderness, being persecuted as Quakers  – these were things I studied in college.  Why didn’t I ever wonder whether that was my family?  Now I know it is.
9. Genealogy can heal things.  This is pretty personal, but I can only say that it helped my mother a lot when she began to understand much better the details of her father’s difficult childhood.  She comes from a very small family so there were not a lot of people around to discuss things with or learn more from.  Through research, we began to know things that she should have known all along.
10. That other people don’t have to do your research for you.  I hate to say it, Ancestry.com commercial, but if someone opens up an account and sees before them a lovely accurate family tree complete with pictures (well, what are the chances of THAT…), they might as well find another hobby.  All the fun would be gone.  The part of this that is most meaningful to me is finding the unfound.  Piecing things together over a long period of time to find something that was lost.  I’m not a professional genealogist – never intend to be – but I know if I was I would only enjoy doing things for people that they couldn’t, for whatever reason, do themselves.

I’d be happy to know what you would add to the list!