FAMILY HISTORY

Why do people worry about geneology?
Lots of reasons:

• Sometimes they want to find that rich or famous person that proves they ARE someone.  Good luck with that one. 
• Sometimes they are that branch of the tree that fell off.  Parents or grandparents moved away never to return, married, had children, then died and the offspring are too alone.  They yearn for their roots.  They yearn to find their people and be part of a family again.
• Sometimes they have heard family stories and want to verify them or prove them wrong.
• Sometimes they are just plain obsessive/compulsive and start a project that ultimately has no end.
• Sometimes they just love history--all history.

A friend from an homogeneous culture told me that no one from that culture worried about geneology.  She said they all knew where they came from and who their ancestors were.  She understood how people in my country would do it since we are all intermixed.  I wondered what she could tell me about her great-great-grandmother---besides that she came from the same culture as everyone else in her family.  I didn't ask her.  It seemed rude to ask.  

 

But my little journey into personal family history taught me alot about my relatives and lots about the regular people that lived in this country before me.  The history books tell you nothing about regular people, history books are full of BIG moments and BIG people and little moments in BIG people's lives--many of which, like Washington's cherry tree cutting, never even happened.

Family history should be real history.  I have seen some older books that were vanity printed; some were good, honest, warts-and-all histories.  Others were prim, proper, with whole branches eliminated due to less than braggable moments.  Searching for and writing about family history should be about self-discovery.  If you are not brave enough to go to the store without full battle makeup, you may not be ready for what your family history reveals. 
There are no benefits to finding and writing an abridged family history.  You might as well just take up something purely creative.

I have heard people argue that geneology is NOT Real history unless there is some BIG moment.  Everyone's family was here for the BIG moments.  EVERYONE'S!

My mother loved telling me about the night that "The War of the Worlds" was on the radio-live.  She knew it was a fictional story, but it was quite dramatic, and her own father got a little revved up before she convinced him it was like a movie.  Apparently, quite a few people had a problem with mistaking that particular production as a genuine live reporting event.  Must have been a little like walking into a showing of "The Blair Witch Project" and thinking it was a news program.

That was history.  That was what her family was doing during that bit of history.  For some people, they would have slept through it, others got out their guns or shivered in their beds.  Everyone alive at that time was somewhere doing something.  History is all about perspective.

Our family history helps to connect us to our roots.  Roots provide sustenance.  They ground us.  They anchor us.  They connect us to the space-time continuum. 

I have heard people say--"I don't have a family history, I'm adopted".  They are still connected.  They KNOW, if they just think about it, that their family goes back to the beginning of humans, just like everyone else's family does.

 If you don't know your history and can't find your history,  it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  It just is a mystery.  If you are really disturbed by the mystery, you can do things like one of the autosomal genetic tests or you can dig really hard--this might actually be a bad thing, as our search for our history should not take over our lives and the brick walls of adoptions can be pretty hard and frustrating.  You can borrow your spouses history or your adoptive family will most likely be glad to share theirs.  Or you can make one up--just remember to keep it real, none of that kings and heros and famous actors crap.

Knowing about the people we came from can help us recognize our strengths and appreciate the diversity of our quirks and strangities.  It can also help us be less judgemental, less arrogant, and less certain of our own superiority. 

Anything that makes us more aware of who we are, what we are, and where we fit into the larger picture is a good thing.  And in those BIG history moments, those BIG historic people were larger than life--the rest of the time, they were just eating, sleeping, toileting, doing chores and pondering the very same things the rest of us were.