Help! I’ve gotten into genealogy (I think)

Is this a fad or an enduring interest?

Next summer, I am planning to go on a trip to Ireland. I’ve never been there, and the college where I work is taking a tour, so it’s a perfect time.

I haven’t really put my attention to it yet (as in pulling out all my copies of James Joyce and Seamus O’Heany), but I did begin to wonder if I had any Irish ancestors that I should keep in mind while preparing for the trip. Many years ago, my paternal grandfather told me my ancestors were German, Irish, and Scots Irish, but I had no proof.

Add to that the fact that two of my retired colleagues have left Wyoming and moved abroad, one to France and the other to Spain. I had wondered for a while if I would be eligible for citizenship in any other countries due to my ancestry, and there seemed one way to find out, which was to start looking.

A friend recommended I try Ancestry.com, which the college has a subscription to.

I gave it a try, found some interesting things, and before long had opened my own account so that I could start building a family tree in earnest.

A caveat is in order. I am a pretty good researcher, but I am new to doing genealogy research. I need to be more orderly about it — watch some videos, read some books, become more systematic. In a research methods course I took in grad school, one of the first lessons was the need to have a plan and be a thoughtful, organized researcher. I learned first hand that this was true.

And, yet when it comes to doing genealogy research, I find I cannot.

For me, I have found genealogy to be my crack cocaine of research. I start working through it, and suddenly hours have passed. I am lost in a sea of stories and old photos and obituaries and headstones and . . . well, it’s a lot, and I enjoy it. Organization is gone as I track the next story.

It is a weird summer in which I am simultaneously thinking about changes coming to my life in the course of the next couple of years while looking almost obsessively at the past.

I suspect that someone discussing their genealogy research is not unlike listening to them discuss their fantasy baseball team, which is to say, not very interesting.

So I’ll leave a few general observations here.

First, I have learned — really learned — that America is a very young country. My mother’s great-grandfathers (on both sides) fought in the Civil War. Go back two more generations, and some of her ancestors participated in the American Revolution.

Second, I have learned that advances in American education are relatively recent. On my mother’s side of the family, she and her sisters and brother were the first to finish high school, and she was the first to go to college. Going back through decades of the US Census shows that a student receiving a sixth-grade education was generally seen as having learned enough to be a productive adult. Our current minimum standard of a high school degree is a new advancement.

Third, I have discovered so many interesting stories — some known and some inferred. These are stories I want to pursue and provide additional context for.

I do have some concerns about Ancestry.com.

For all intents, they have “gamified” research. Their massive databases make it possible to screen relevant data fairly easily. Add to that a community that is creating family trees, posting photos, and sharing stories. It can be easy to contact others, and perhaps I’ll do that at some point.

It has been strange to see family photos from my mother’s collection posted on the trees of distant cousins I do not know. This one, for example, appears over and over and over.

My maternal grandmother is in there somewhere — she would be one of the children. And my mother remembers that house and that porch.

Everything is, apparently, connected.

When I first embarked on this, I found that my grandmother’s story was missing from some of the family trees, and that bothered me. Her story — and that of my mother and aunts and uncles — should be included. So I set out to correct that.

Here’s a photo taken across the road from the photo about — my mom is in the front corner.

Whenever I find this photo on the trees of distant family members, I tag everyone I recognize from my side of the family. Their stories should live in, and insofar as I am able to tell them, I intend to do that.

However, I’m not taking a DNA test. Let the dead bury the dead.

In the meantime, I have more trees to make and more stories to learn. It’s been a good summer on that front.

As always, thanks for reading —

Renee

ReneeDechert.ink is an old-school blog in which the author explores a range of subjects and archives some of her earlier work.

Expect posts to appear whenever they appear.

Contact me at Renee.Dechert@gmail.com.