"To forget one's ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root." ~ Chinese Porverb

I go through most hobbies like many people go through toilet paper.  Some hobbies do endure and reappear ever so often but with me the average lifetime of a hobby is six months.  My family has become very familiar with this personal trait so when I make out my Christmas list, they check the date to see if it’s been six months or not.  “Is he still interested in THAT book?” – sort of thing.

One of my enduring hobbies has been genealogy.  I got started before the Internet, when I got transferred to the Washington DC area (home of the National Archives and Library of Congress).  I had been told a few vague stories about my ancestry by my Grandmother, but I was compelled to learn more about why was I the way I was?  My wife – bless her heart – spent many a weekend with me not only in the facilities in Washington DC but also in distant county court houses in Virginia researching the wanttabe stone mason’s apprenticeship  papers to my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.  (True story).

In genealogy you discover among your ancestry, true American heroes of which a great deal is written and scoundrels of whom very little (usually) is written.  Of course, I know from which side the majority of my genes came from.

In talking with other seniors who have done genealogy, I’m surprised how many of my ancestors have been in America for a relatively – (pun intended) – long time.  My latest arrival was my great-grandfather in 1882 (he was a scoundrel).  Some senior’s ancestors have not yet arrived.  

Each generation back, of course, doubles the number of ancestors you have (unless you come from the Appalachians) so the chances of finding someone famous gets larger.

I love the mysteries that you discover – or possibility create.  “What happened to Amanda?”  She left with Daniel as they emmigrated from North Carolina to Texas in 1868 but doesn’t appear in the next 1870 census.  Daniel is then listed alone with his three daughters.

The resolution of those mysteries though is a great satisfaction.  (Amanda died of consumption in 1869)

The increasing predominance of the Internet however is changing this hobby.  The new information is contained on paper among legal documents in a remote county court house or in a written memoir in a village library and can’t be retrieved by the click of a mouse.  Too many people think they are doing genealogy by copying what others have discovered.  But I’m a grumpy old man.

©2014 Lester C. Welch