Why You Should Explore Your Family Tree.
Who do you think you are?
A Never Ending Hobby
Way back in 2010, when I was giving up drinking and getting myself healthy, I needed a hobby or five to keep myself busy.
One of those hobbies was researching my family tree. It sounds boring at first. But it is one of the most fascinating things I have ever done. Finding out where you came from and who you are made of is ridiculously satisfying. It’s also addictive; for each relative you find, you experience a little rush of excitement. Then, you realise that for each of those relatives, there are at least two more to find, and you must go on to find their parents.
If it takes a little detective work, it becomes even more thrilling when you find those tiny, scrawled names on an ancient piece of paper and can piece the family together.
Finding where they lived, exploring the area, seeing any old buildings they would have seen, the churches they married in or the places they are buried all help you feel connected to something greater.
I now have almost 2,000 relatives, past and present, and many of their births, deaths, marriages, newspaper mentions, occupations, and more are all carefully recorded on my software.
Brilliant Bygone Relatives
From my direct maternal line to Queen Victoria’s tailors and to Hills & Saunders photographers (who took portrait photos of Royalty and Nobility) to my Dad’s side of Agricultural Labourers (with a road named after them as so many of them lived all together down the little country lane) to the famous Red Barn Murderer of Maria Marten, William Corder, sharing my 6th Gt. Grandparents.
Never forget all the courageous soldiers of the wars throughout history and those who emigrated or were sent to avoid prison, from England to far-flung places like Canada, the USA, and Australia. When you have researched your tree, you can remember them as individuals. Some of mine have a wall dedicated to them in a local tiny church.
There are stories of pox and plague, of romance and mystery. Of Ill-gotten gains, illegitimate children, of riches won and lost. It is a drama novel that spans many, many decades and centuries. It’s all there in our histories, and being connected to it makes it so much more incredible.
Where to begin?
Before you begin, be sure you have a way to record EVERYTHING. I have tried many different family history software, but I always seem to return to Family Historian. It is good value for money, the software is robust and reliable, you get free updates, and it has never once bugged out or let me down.
The best place to start gathering information is with your own relatives. I was lucky enough to know my Grandparents and even two of my Great Grandparents. My great aunts and uncles and some of their cousins were alive through my younger years, and even recently, I have been lucky enough to have met a few of the older relatives who are all treasure troves of stories, photos, and information.
Once you get past the realms of first-person memory, things become more difficult, and now you must learn to research.
Everyone knows about Ancestry.com or FindMyPast.com and they are fantastic for searching old records and seeing copies of things. They cost money, and if you are just starting, you might prefer to look at FamilySearch, which is less intuitive but free. However, please be sure you are searching through the right documents on any of these sites, as these search engines of genealogical records can very quickly send you on a path of looking up completely the wrong people. Before you know it, you have spent weeks or even months researching hundreds of relatives only to discover that Mary Ann Smith from Exeter, b.1833, is not the same person as Maryann Smith from Exeter, b. 1833, and all the family you built around her is not yours.
In the UK, ten yearly censuses record every person in every household, along with their occupations and dates and places of birth. These are immensely helpful for researching into the early 1800s, with the first UK-wide census recorded in 1840. Before that, looking through parish registers gives baptisms, marriages and burials, often with birth and death details plus names of parents of babies and more.
War records are readily available on many sites to see where and when your relatives fought, and it is a very humbling experience.
Record Offices contain searchable indexes of documents, and you can make appointments to see original documents signed by your relatives that are hundreds of years old, often signed by their own hand. This is a truly moving experience and brings home that these people in your tree were real, with lives, families and stories of their own.
Have you researched your tree? Or would you like to? I promise it is well worth it!
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I’m past 60 Subs!! Yay! Everything is going in the right direction. Thank you to everyone who has read my work and stuck with me thus far; I appreciate each and every one of you.
