Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am getting back into my well loved hobby of genealogy now that I have moved back to my home state.
A few weeks ago I went to a free genealogical seminar on why people pursue the hobby and it made me curious about others and to reassess what my ultimate goals were in regards to my research.
Basically the presenter mentioned that many times people just want to know who their great grandparents or great great grandparents were and that is enough for them. Others want to trace their ancestry back to a specific country or find a connection to a specific individual. Others want to write a family narrative/history about their family.
I have always been interested in writing and history and genealogy since I was a child and this seminar made me decide to find a specific line of my family and write a genealogical narrative about them. I am narrowing it down to my current location of NW Ohio due to living here and having a lot of resources available for research purposes. I have found out that my family may have been one of the original black families in this area and that they were free people of color during the time of slavery in this country. My research has shown a lack of information about free persons of color in this area and so I am gathering and outlining a book.
But it made me wonder if anyone else has specific goals or if you all just like to find out things about your ancestry due to curiosity, like I have been doing for about 20 years now, just because it is fun.
Do you all have an "ultimate goal" in regards to your genealogy research or have you already accomplished that goal?
I have written and am constantly updating a family history but it wasn't really a goal when I started genealogy. I just reached a point in my research where it seemed like a fun thing to do. I never really had an ultimate goal - just to find out as much as possible about my family history.
My goal originally was to find the original immigrants and where they came from. I expected to find mainly Scots Irish coming across the sea in the 1800s with some English and a few Germans in the mix. I was surprised to find that most of my lines go back much further on American soil and sometimes finding those original immigrants is difficult.
I have no desire to write a narrative. There is just too much I do not know beyond names and dates for too many people.
Yes, I have several goals, but not all defined -- kind of making it up as I go along. Not sure how I'll know when I'm finished.
For one side of the family, I've collected and transcribed a hundred or so chatty newspaper articles, plus obituaries - I searched these out to learn about life in those times, as well as for the facts that they gave me (they verified some family stories). At some point, when I've checked and double-checked them, I'll make up a book and distribute to all of my cousins via PDF, along with an updated family tree.
The second thing that I'm in the middle of is scanning all of my and my brothers' old family photos - my Mom made individual albums for us at one time. Going through these albums has been great -- lots of facts, but also more questions. At some point I'll put together a consolidated digital album along with family trees, more articles/obituaries, etc. to give to my family. I'll also give them all of the scans on disk, as well as a PDF and a printed book.
I still have some brick walls to solve -- someday. But I've also distracted myself by becoming involved in Find-A-Grave -- photographing gravestones and researching complete strangers -- it fascinates me!
You don't have to write about everyone in your tree, just the interesting ones if you choose.
That's just it. I do not have a whole lot of material on anyone that might be called "interesting." The interesting folks are too far out the tree and already have been written about - though it was interesting to me to find they are my ancestors!
I didn't start out with the goal of writing about my family history, but that's what it has turned out to be. Did my mother-in-law's, working on my father's and father-in-law's (my mother's had been done by another relative).
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
That's just it. I do not have a whole lot of material on anyone that might be called "interesting." The interesting folks are too far out the tree and already have been written about - though it was interesting to me to find they are my ancestors!
With most of my ancestors it's the same thing - not a ton of material since they were "simple folk" and just lived their lives quietly. But I easily made them interesting by researching the history of their time and place. My 4th great grandfather was a blacksmith during the American Revolution, and although I know nothing about his specific beliefs or actions, I learned about his town and its militia, and with that kind of information I could speculate what his life had been like ... which made a quiet simple man quite interesting.
I didn't start out with the goal of writing about my family history, but that's what it has turned out to be. Did my mother-in-law's, working on my father's and father-in-law's (my mother's had been done by another relative).
With most of my ancestors it's the same thing - not a ton of material since they were "simple folk" and just lived their lives quietly. But I easily made them interesting by researching the history of their time and place. My 4th great grandfather was a blacksmith during the American Revolution, and although I know nothing about his specific beliefs or actions, I learned about his town and its militia, and with that kind of information I could speculate what his life had been like ... which made a quiet simple man quite interesting.
I love that you have done the bold above. That is my goal to make my simple folk interesting. Even though they didn't do anything extraordinary, I personally am fascinated by the lives of regular people. I had a college professor whose focus was on African American miners in Alabama and he really tried to get across to his students the fact that normal people usually have the most interesting lives because they live through all those things that turn into our fascinating historical events. Oddly enough, my professor, even though he was white, ignited an interest for me in black miners too. Turned out one side of my family were actually black coal miners in WV and it was hard to decide between writing about them or my Ohio family who were free black people. I am pretty sure though that the Ohio branch came to Ohio via the Underground Rail Road it is family lore but I have yet to prove it and don't know if there is a way too and I just think it would be a great story about local black history in the area since there isn't really any historical works about early free black people in NW Ohio.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blinx
Yes, I have several goals, but not all defined -- kind of making it up as I go along. Not sure how I'll know when I'm finished.
For one side of the family, I've collected and transcribed a hundred or so chatty newspaper articles, plus obituaries - I searched these out to learn about life in those times, as well as for the facts that they gave me (they verified some family stories). At some point, when I've checked and double-checked them, I'll make up a book and distribute to all of my cousins via PDF, along with an updated family tree.
The second thing that I'm in the middle of is scanning all of my and my brothers' old family photos - my Mom made individual albums for us at one time. Going through these albums has been great -- lots of facts, but also more questions. At some point I'll put together a consolidated digital album along with family trees, more articles/obituaries, etc. to give to my family. I'll also give them all of the scans on disk, as well as a PDF and a printed book.
I still have some brick walls to solve -- someday. But I've also distracted myself by becoming involved in Find-A-Grave -- photographing gravestones and researching complete strangers -- it fascinates me!
The digital album is a great idea!!
And I have always been fascinated by Find-A-Grave. I love cemeteries (people in my family think I am nuts lol as I like to just meander around them and look at everyone's graves). I have thought of participating but haven't really done it yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PA2UK
I have written and am constantly updating a family history but it wasn't really a goal when I started genealogy. I just reached a point in my research where it seemed like a fun thing to do. I never really had an ultimate goal - just to find out as much as possible about my family history.
I was the same. Glad to hear I'm not some outsider hobby genealogist. Most of the people at the seminar I went to were very serious about documenting everything and making books of their family history to send to local libraries and family research centers and such and I just never thought about those things at all. But I do think it would be fun to write a narrative. I read "Cane River" a few years ago and thought the author did a great job of turning her family history into a good story and I wouldn't mind writing something along those lines instead of a dry, "John begat Michael begat Eli" genealogical record.
Like some others here I had no particular goal in mind. My cousin was working on my maternal family history in Vermont and I thought it was kind of interesting. He assigned me a few projects (later on I realized that he gave me his brick walls and it was no wonder that I never came up with anything.)
Then my Dad passed away and at his funeral my uncle said out loud, "I would like to know more about the family. I would like to know my grandfather's name." I told him that I had just bought a computer and I would see what I could find. This was in the late 90s.
I knew my grandfather had been born in Hull, England so I typed his name and Hull into a search. Eventually a genealogy group popped up on the screen. It took a while to gain the courage but I finally posted a query. When the answer arrived in a few days, I almost fell off my chair! Someone in New Zealand posted a census from 1891 and there was my grandfather as a little boy with his parents!
I was totally hooked. Then I was threatened by a cousin here, saying I was opening a can of worms. But later on she gave me a strange old crumpled paper note that turned out to be like a Rosetta stone because the names on it connected some families back in England. When I typed the content of that note to the website, the most amazing cousins replied. One, a man in his late 60s and an avid genealogist, had been looking for our family for years! That note provided the missing link.
This gentleman turned out to be sort of magical as he told me he would do my family history for me! OMG. I would ask and he would find. and find and find and find. He was born in the village that my ancestors had lived in for generations and which I had never heard of. Long story short--I finally went there and he gave me the grand tour so I walked where they walked and I saw the countryside and maybe best of all, I met my (what can I call him--my benefactor.)
I am still working where he left off (he did pass away) and I have taken up my cousin's work on my maternal side which is getting really interesting and is relatively easy since they all lived in New England. Turns out they even started out in the next town over! So now I get to see houses from around 1700 that they lived in and the sites of their farms. These people were simple folk but it's interesting to think of how they survived the winters and how they managed to clear the land and settle new towns.
Most of this is in Ancestry now and when I feel satisfied with it (if ever) I will pay Ancestry to print it out in book form. Not that I want an actual book, but it's hard to print out individual pages other than just the tree. So I won't be writing the book, just getting the information printed out so that the next generation can have it. Ancestry calls it a book.
Great topic, thanks, for sharing your thoughts on the topic. Currently, I don't plan on writing anything. I will leave family trees on Ancestry for others. Maybe when I am older and retired, I may do more with my family history. I had thought about creating a family scrapbook of some sort, but probably won't do this. Who knows? - I may change my mind.
I come and go with researching. I hope to meet a few distant cousins one day. So far, I have gotten in touch with one or 2 people who would be great to meet in person. I just don't know when it would be possible to meet.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
