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I like discovering a different cultural background to my current one. Such as exploring the Irish Catholic roots on my father's side and the English Catholic roots on my mother's side.
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I like this reason as well as I found some cultural surprises in mine. There is also one side of my family I knew very little about, so putting those pieces together has been rewarding for me personally. There were basically no stories handed down to me on that side of the family due to long-term estrangement.
For the estranged side of my family, I've contacted a few distant cousins who are also interested in genealogy via Ancestry, but have not had any long-term contact with them outside of a few messages. Maybe in time that might change.
Going to the old gravesite and learning that my great-grandmother had 6 children and only my grandmother survived to adulthood. That certainly puts things in perspective.
Plus, you cannot do genealogy without loving, knowing, and learning about the history of the times. Your ancestors were living the history in the textbooks!
I have found tons of family who opened their doors to other family who had hard times, and they all lived together happily (?) until they could get themselves together again. Most lived within blocks of each other. So different from these times where everyone is scattered all over the country.
I'm also discovering that horrible crimes happened back then, just as they do now, just less frequently.
Very true. They also just got less publicity. Rapes and similar incidents were very hush hush. Murders got maybe a paragraph. And when Herbert got his arm cut off by a freight train or a toddler got run down by a team of horses it would get one or two lines in the paper. Today these types of incidents can get serial treatment.
I love history and love family so I love finding out what happened and how everything in my family came to be today. In a way its like "meeting" your ancestors and how it all influences who we are today.
I like finding repeating patterns in my family and how they coped with the struggles and challenges of history. Were they Patriots or Tories? There is a rebelliousness that runs through the generations often manifested in religion and often a black sheep pops up in the form of someone who strikes out on their own. They were anti-slavery but one ancestor was 'awarded' a house slave as the settlement of a civil case, in lieu of payment, to be held until redeemed by the losing party. That is a difficult position to be in and I still don't know how it was resolved.
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