When you start out
on your great tree-building adventure, consider that you are doing the H.G.
Wells thing in your mind. You are really
doing time travel, through what you find in documents, plus your historically informed
imagination, and… you really don’t know what you will find.
Everyone
goes back to Charlemagne -- right??
Everyone
has royalty - right??
Or, heading the
other direction … many researchers are hoping to find their own small flock of
black sheep -- the witch, the pirate, the thief -- right??
Last
Christmas a friend of mine gave her mother membership in a very unique lineage
society, "The Descendants of the Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the
Kings of Britain" aka the "Royal Bastards." Solid research, and totally delightful -- at this remove.
They are still looking for a witch in the
lineage. They have come up with some
Salem residents, but so far, no witch connection.
So far in my own research, no Royal Bastards, but
then, I'm still headed toward the pond crossing on most of my lines.
But I have found the
names/voices of two stillborn cousins of my mother. For her entire life, she believed the family
had one child; she didn't know about these births. It's nice to have that entire nuclear family
tracked.
Even tracking names
can get interesting. My mother didn't
know the first name of this cousin's grandmother, a woman who was at every
joint family celebration for years.
"We called her Grandma."
Her name was Malwina…. Again,
lovely to fill in the space on the tree.
No great amount of
courage required here, but family situations get strange and twisty, and the
genealogist is called upon to research rigorously and report truthfully. One does not prune the family tree, for
either kindness or timidity on the part of the researcher or the client.
You want to know
your ancestors?
Ancient Chinese
proverb: "Be careful what you wish for."
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2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical. Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.
© 2018, SE Ross