Discovering Genealogy

It’s only a matter of time until it happens to you. You’ll be chatting away to your relatives and someone will mention that your Grandmother used to work as a Lady’s Maid up at the ‘big house’, or that your Great Grandfather worked as a labourer on the construction of the Trent Mersey Canal, or even that a cousin on your mother’s side emigrated to a new life in Patagonia . All at once your life is turned upside down with hundreds of questions you’d like answering about your ancestors. The bug has bitten and you’ve suddenly lifted the lid on what you soon begin to realise is a huge family jigsaw puzzle without any instructions on how, or where, to begin linking the pieces together.

For anyone with a desire to find out more about those who have gone before us, Genealogy is the study of family lineages from one or more ancestors to determine a pedigree. For the thousands of people who enjoy this fascinating hobby, part of the attraction is not only discovering the names, dates and places where their ancestors were born, married or died, but also unearthing stories to ‘add flesh to their bones’ and create a bigger picture.

 As people pass through the various stages of life from birth to burial, the majority leave a trail for us to follow in the form of documentation and records. The details enable us to link together a series of events – it’s just a matter of knowing where to look by combining original sources with dedicated online databases. For example, census records provide information of the inhabitants of a house giving details of where they were born and even the occupations they were employed in. Ships manifests and passenger records help us uncover travel plans or emigration overseas whilst wills and newspaper obituaries shed light on what our ancestors thought of their close relatives and in turn, how they were perceived by others.

Each fact is simply strung together to create a timeline of our ancestor’s lives. As a result, we can prove or disprove stories that have been passed down through the generations, helping us to understand more about the inherited memorabilia, photographs and personal items that most of us have tucked away in an old suitcase in the attic. Perhaps its now time to dust off that suitcase and discover ‘your story’.

I try to answer some of those puzzling questions in my book Family History for Beginners, but please feel free to contact me via this blog and I will do my best to set you on the fascinating genealogical road to finding out the history of your ancestors.