Ready to tone up your family history physique?
When we’re working out our family histories, we want results—and we want them yesterday. But sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. We hesitate. We procrastinate. We hem and haw. We even close our minds to certain details or limit ourselves to a few tried and true methods of research.
How do we get over these hurdles? Empowerment.
Using what we already know about a person, it is possible to reconstruct portions of an individual’s life from the facts published in an obituary. Obituaries can provide a wealth of important information and research clues and include valuable pointers that can send our research in new directions. They’re easy to use and they’re easy to access. But they may not remain so useful forever.
Take a look at some cultural enclaves, where groups of immigrants from the same country clustered together and, in the process, perpetuated cultural components of their native lands.
Language, culture, sounds, sights, and smells—if you’ve ever been to a foreign country, it’s likely all of your senses were triggered—good or bad —the moment you stepped off the boat or plane.
“In all of us there is a hunger marrow deep to know our heritage—to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainment in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”
– Alex Haley
Whenever we travel the country, people question us about our hobby.
Wikis, Blogs, RSS, and Widgets. Characters in a children’s book? Not so. These strange words describe new ways that the Internet is being used by people to exchange information.
My grandmother lived in the same apartment building in Brooklyn for over fifty years. She had moved there just before the bar mitzvah of my father, her eldest child, and remained there until her death, raising three children in, and burying my grandfather from, the same two-bedroom apartment. When I was growing up, my feelings about my grandmother were the same, I imagine, as many other children.
What’s the best way to learn more about genealogical resources wh ile also keeping abreast of new methods, techniques, records, indexes, and other aids? Plain and simple—education.
Alfred Sheinwold, a famous author of books on playing bridge, once wrote: “Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.”
The same holds true in genealogy.
“And this our life,
exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones,
and good in everything.”
—William ShakespeareMy young niece visited recently, noting with revulsion my collection of cemetery photographs. She gasped as she pointed to a hundred-year-old tombstone blemished with rust-colored lichen. “Is that blood?” she asked, worried.
Music and genealogy are two subjects that you don’t hear talked about together very often. Surprisingly, music can help you in interviews with relatives. It can express your feelings. And it can give you a perspective on your ancestors’ lives that you’ll never get from reading a roll of microfilm.
“There stands the glass.” That’s what my father remembered, just that one line.
