Some genealogists are born into the hobby. A mom, a grandfather, or a favorite aunt has been researching for decades and uses gentle encouragement to lure a young person into continuing the hunt. Or for some genealogists who become intrigued later in life, there are old boxes of information, relatives who wrote things down, or famous ancestors whose details are not hard to find.
And then there’s the rest of us.
Like lots of people, I grew up with two sides of the family, mom’s and dad’s. Dad’s side were Scottish Highlanders who settled in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia during the Scottish influx of the 1820′s. Dad lost his father very early, but his mom, who lived to age 100, raised her children to know and love the place where she and her husband grew up. Even though that part of the family was far away, and seldom seen, I grew up knowing what my heritage was.
That is, until I started thinking about my mom’s family. This started around age 50. Although I knew my mom’s parents and grandmother well, they seldom or never spoke about any family background. Of all of them, I suspect my grandfather was most interested in that sort of thing, but he had a lot of gaps in his own family story, so probably didn’t feel it was possible to discuss the details with children. And I was the youngest of his 6 grandchildren. Genealogy is not a youngest child’s game … far better to be an oldest child, and have those generations around longer.
mom’s gr-grandparents, Louis and Jessie Murdock
I wondered why there was no “heritage” on my mom’s side. How could that be? They must have come from somewhere. I gradually realized that I had to know. A lifelong reader, I couldn’t live with having a blank sheet of paper where there should be a story – a story that belonged to me, my mom, my brothers and sister, my cousins, my nephews, and my children.
Well, the paper was not completely blank; it consisted of these names that my grandfather had written down about 50 years ago of his and his wife’s parents and grandparents:
Grampa wrote down his and Grandma’s parents and grandparents
Modest as it is, this was the legacy that helped me to get started. And my mother knew not one iota farther back, and knew the birthplace of only one gr-grandparent: Jessie MacLeod was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia (and go figure, I’ve never been able to trace that). Of my 8 gg-grandparents on this piece of paper, one is adopted, one is a total mystery, two are very murky, and four have amazing stories that go back to the earliest settlements of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. While I am sure I will never be done with this, I’m so glad I got started.
But sometimes I have to wonder, why the mystery? Why do people not know where they come from? Of the two families, why was one ignoring its history?
WHY DIDN’T YOU KEEP TRACK?
Recently I spent some time with the wife of a co-worker, who was born and raised in Korea. She heard about my genealogy interest, and confided, in a nice way, that in the decades she has spent in the U.S., she has never understood what genealogy is all about. In Korea, everyone knows their ancestors. Families keep careful records. No hunting needed. I could tell that if she wasn’t so pleasant and polite, she would have stood up, put her hands on her hips, and shouted, “Why didn’t you KEEP TRACK?” And I have to ask myself, why didn’t we keep track?
What stops the average family from carefully noting the coming and going of each generation? Early on, a lack of literacy? A lack of paper (thus, writing in the one book in the house, the Bible)? A lack of interest? hard feelings? A belief that this is common knowledge, and will always be known?
Are you a “first generation genealogist”, and if so, why do you think that is?
Link to this post: http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/02/18/the-decision-to-find-your-family/
Very interesting! I, too, am essentially the first in my immediate family to start tracking this information. In some cases, it’s easy — for I, too, come from the early Rhode Island families and have a VERY well-researched maiden name. But other cases (especially with my grandmothers on both the maternal and paternal sides) are almost complete dead ends. Still, I look forward to (one day) uncovering their stories.
Thanks for the post!
Your posts reminds me of my own reason for my interest in Genealogy. For me it started out in my mid to late 30s. All my grandparents either died when I was young or before I was born. I didn’t know much about them and started out just wanting to know more about their lives.
Regards, Jim
Genealogy Blog at Hidden Genealogy Nuggets
So are you saying your older sister should have had this all sorted out for you?
Love,
Your older sister
Well Bon, just sayin, Grampa DID explain about the Spauldings to you, information that will take me years to re-create … I wonder, could we get you hypnotized so you could recall that conversation?? Readers, any tips on helping your older siblings recall those important conversations???
This is a great discussion topic. I’m the first to really sit down and record my mom’s side of the family. As for my dad’s side, I’m the first to even think about who my ancestors were! When I started researching, my dad barely knew the names of his grandparents (even though they all lived until he was about 10-15 years old). He had 5 uncles that died in WW2 and has no idea any of their names. For whatever reason, my grandmother did not discuss anything about her parents or grandparents and actively prevented her children from knowing anything about their father’s family. It’s odd. The family is from Austria so I’ve only been able to do limited research. Maybe it is a cultural thing? I’m not sure. I think it may have been lack interest and hard feelings.
My dad’s brother was somewhat interested in genealogy, but focused mostly on researching the surname, not necessarily family history. He researched famous people with the same surname, but never made any connections to us.
Wow, thanks to everyone for the interesting comments. In my case, the relatives I wonder about were in the U.S. since the 1600′s. They were sturdy middle-class English stock, and they stayed in southern New England for centuries. In some respects I think their fortunes declined as time went on and property was divided among many children (they should have headed west like everyone else’s ancestors!). But I suppose, like several people have said, it comes down to genealogy meaning something to some people, and meaning nothing to many other people.
Katie, your blog story about using early census records was very helpful. thanks again to all who contributed their thoughts here.
I am the first in my family to record our family’s history. I had grown up with stories from my grandmother. Stories of five Irish sisters growing up in New York City in the early 1900s.Stories of my mother growing up there in the 1920s & 1930s. I loved it and wanted more. I started writing it down. I stumbled across a children’s genealogy book. I had not know what genealogy was before that. That led me to more books, libraries, reels of microfilm,…
Some branches are more open than others.Some do not understand why I care. Others are happy to tell their tales. Most of the family is very happy to learn about my newest discoveries.
Martin and Susan said it well, and it describes my families. They were working class people/ peasants who immigrated in the 1880′s. The men worked hard to keep their families fed and housed. The women did laundry by hand, sewed by hand, swept and mopped floors, beat carpets if they had them. cooked on wood stoves. Not to mention raising the children. Their formal education was probably brief and their concept of history was much narrower than ours is today in this world of instant and universal communication.
It wasn’t until modern times that their descendents have the time and energy to devote to to the question of “How did I get here?”.
I have a good friend (in her 50s) who has inherited a quilt made by an ancestor in the mid-19th century and she simply does not care to learn anything about that person or the intervening generations. I have been unable to understand this disinterest. But we are good friends and we have tried to understand each other’s viewpoints. To her, ancestors are just “people” and not any different than any other people who lived before us. She doesn’t feel ‘her’ ancestors have any more value (to her) than anyone else who has lived before. She also is much more interested in the ‘big picture” like the causes of the Civil War, as opposed to what one’s ancestors did during it.
I think it comes down to we are all just different and different things have value to each us. Where we come from may not have been important to individuals in our family trees – it is just immaterial to them. If we have someone like my friend in our own trees, family knowledge may be ‘lost’ to generations that come after.
My mom did not know much about her ancestry and didn’t seem to care either. At one point we were going thru a bunch of old family jewerly and I was excited to see a bunch of old wedding rings. She had no idea who they belonged to and said to me “What does it matter? They are all dead”.
So we are all different…That is my way of making sense of it…
Btw – great photo!
I think coming from a working class background has something to do with it. When putting food on the table is the main concern, family history is a luxury item.
Then there are breaks in the generations. A parent dies young. Adoption. Prison. Mental Health problems. Any of these can cause family history to be either passed upon or actively hidden.
I’m the first genealogist in my family and I feel it in all my lines that I have to research.
Perhaps it has something to do with being a nation of immigrants – and thus, emigrants. My grandparents said very little about their lives in Europe and the family they left behind. Their children believe it was simply too hard to think about – the loss was so great – and that they had to focus on building new lives and looking forward.
Even within this country those who migrated west or south had few chances to stay connected with their roots until the 20th c.