6 Reasons to Love Genealogy—and Learn How You Became You

Genealogy has all of the elements of a first class mystery novel, a barn burner of a historical film.  Be prepared for suspense, intrigue, and emotional ups and downs as you delve into your family’s past. There is always excitement and surprise in genealogy,  and it’s available to anyone with curiosity and a few hours a week to spare.

1. Experience the gripping drama of the past

Like a great novel or spy thriller, mystery is at the heart of genealogy. Gradually, as you begin to piece together the people and events that you have heard about for years, your story begins to reveal itself and you become hooked. Your imagination is the engine, and the clues and signposts are the fuel. That’s how it is with genealogy, and that’s what awaits you as you probe into the epic story of your family’s past.

It happened with me a few weeks ago. One morning my daughter called and casually mentioned she had signed up with Ancestry.ca. That’s nice, I said, and went on to discuss other things. A few days later, she sent me a workup of the first few entries, and before the week was out, I was thinking about it day and night. We began to speculate. Who were my great grandparents, and what were they like? Whatever happened to that uncle that disappeared? Who was in that old picture on my mother’s bureau all those years?

Although I’m certain there will be disappointments and dead ends ahead, I’m also sure of many rewards and positive outcomes. Here are only a few:

2. See ancestors as living, breathing people

I’m only at the beginning, but I’m already developing an affinity for the ancestors we’ve discovered. I can’t help but identify with the lives they had, the events that consumed them, the challenges they faced, and what eventually became of them.

I’m beginning to see them as real living people, who emigrated here to change their circumstances, who had courage and incredible resilience as they accepted a new land. As we track their lives through documents and family stories, we are gaining a genuine understanding of them.

3. Understand family characteristics and how they transpired

As we scrutinize old family pictures, we begin to see some of the physical traits that appear in the living relatives we know. Other clues come up, as we study what we know about their lives and understand the things they chose to do, the decisions they made. “This family member lives out Uncle J’s sense of adventure”, we observe, “That family member is as devoted and responsible as Aunt S”. We become fascinated by the miracle of genetics and how we have been formed.

4. Find people who are remarkably like you

My daughter has already been in touch with living family members who have  emerged, as she delves into the information she has found. We are amazed at how receptive they are, how excited they are to find out more about their family.

We are setting up phone calls, and possibly Skpe sessions to connect with more of them. It is our hope that some family members will have old documents, old pictures, and know of stories handed down through the generations. These are the hidden artifacts of genealogy, and we hope to uncover them.

5. Track the history of pioneers as we breathe new life into them

With the Internet at our disposal, I realize that today’s tools are a boon to researchers.What an opportunity! Now I can find out at least a little about where my family lived in the old country, in my case, Romania. What village they came from, why they decided to take the extreme measure of packing up and leaving to travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Drama, romance and an adventurous spirit are part of it—hospitalization at sea, love at first sight in a new city, death and broken family ties during the great 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a poignant trek across thousands of miles of prairie. All of these things happened in my family within the context of sweeping world-changing events.

6. Create a memorial to family members of your past

My daughter and I are still in the process of early discovery. Anchoring each event with documentation is painstaking, and takes time. But this is the nitty-gritty of ancestry research, the steps we need to take in order to prove, rather than speculate. We know we need use discipline and persistence to be as accurate as possible. After all, only the truth will honor those who came before us. And this is what we hope to reveal when we finally share our results with all family members.

Will Moneymaker, founder of Ancestral Findings, pins it down, saying:

“Remember, these were living people once, real people who actually walked the earth. They deserve to be remembered by their descendants, just as you would want to be remembered. In a very real way, you are doing a service to them by pulling them out of the obscurity of time and into the present to re-introduce them to the many descendants they produced.”