RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: LizO on Monday 14 December 09 07:15 GMT (UK)
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Researching family history has taught me so many things. My kids know better than to ask the question above as they could get a very long answer! Just wondering what the rest of you feel you have gained, in information, experience and wisdom from this activity.
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In 25 words or less, I meant to add.
:) :)
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Hi Liz,
I only started my family history in July, I thought (foolishly) oh that will be easy put down a few names and dates and done. Of course I am now hopelessly addicted I want to know everything about everyone. I have gained a great knowledge of my family, I have gained new friends and relatives whom I would never have met, which is wonderful, and everyday I find out something new I feel I have gained no matter how small, I love it, I also gained my rootschat friends :D Not sure how I managed without them. ;)
Merry Christmas
Leandra
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oops sorry Liz,
Our posts must have crossed, missed that 25 words or less, ;)
Leandra
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Hey Leandra
No problem! It's great to hear how much you're enjoying the experience. At the library the other day a woman walking past my computer noticed I was doing a search on ancestry. "Oh, I decided to try that," she said. "I took out a subscription for a month but there was so much there, there was no way I could finish it!" I guess she just gave up after that, which seemed a shame.
It is hard to imagine at first just how many connections you can find. I think of that poem of Robert Frost -"two roads diverged in a yellow wood" about how one thing leads to another, endlessly. Genealogy's a bit like that for me.
I added the word count because after my initial post I thought some people might take a deep breath and decide it would take far too long to tell it all and so it would be easier not to try.
LizO
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I started mine a few years ago after my uncle had done some of it on my dads side of the family. Now it is my turn to give more.
My aunty on mums side did some of our family but have found more on them as well. She does not like being corrected either
I love helping others out as well
It has been lovely to have rootschat friends too ;)
Newbe :)
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Hi Newbe
I can't help myself - one of your research names is SMITH in New Zealand. Same here! Do you suppose it's the same family (arrived Wellington 1870s)?
It sure helps to have someone else's work to start from. My mother did a lot of research on her family when I was growing up, and told me lots about it, even when I wasn't that interested. She also had lots of letters saved over the years. I started on my husband's family without a lot of background, so it's been a very different story. I've learned a lot more New Zealand history, and about genealogy resources, and it's a very different situation now that when my mother had to write away and wait for the information.
LizO
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Sorry not same family as I have since found out my great grandfather changs has family surname to SMITH from PURCELL after they arrived in 1902/03
Do not know the reason why ::)
Newbe
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In my searches and researches I have found a new interest in history in general. I hated it at school. Now I love to know about the history of a town, usually the town my ancestors came from.
I have learnt to be patient and impatient.
I have made so many new friends, many from Rootschat. :-*
But today .... learnt nothing. ;D ;D
Margaret
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I guess patience is one of the things we learn, along with things like how people lived and worked in different times and places.
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Fifteen years ago,my eldest son needed some family detail for a school project,so i contacted a cousin who had done some work and she scribbled some notes by hand for me.A lot of the information i have was given to my sister who still lives where she was born,and i have added to and corrected several trees.
What i learnt is that a family story is not family history until you have proved it,and today i learnt nothing.
Eric
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Well, Eric, as Scarlet O'Hara famously said, "Tomorrow's another day!" Maybe things will go better tomorrow. I hope so!
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Liz,
I am not in the least bit disappointed becuase in the few months i have been a chatter,i have much more information than i would have expected a year back.
Eric
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In my searches and researches I have found a new interest in history in general. I hated it at school. Now I love to know about the history of a town, usually the town my ancestors came from.
Absolutely! History at school always bored me to tears.
About 15 years ago I picked up a couple of old books about the area I grew up in, at a flea market, and that started me on the (relatively short lived) hobby of collecting old books about the area. That in turn led me to family history, which in turn has led to an interest in the history through which my ancestors lived. Along the way it has also forced me to acquire new skills, such as (very basic) Latin, which I would never have had the remotest interest in otherwise.
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Not so much what I have learnt, but what I think I've found today :)...
A photo of the grave of the first husband of one of my paternal grandmother's sisters who was unfortunately killed in WW2 having only been married 6 months :'(
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In 25 words or less, I meant to add.
:) :)
That's going to be hard ;D but he goes:-
As a kid in the 1950's - Machine Gun Jack McGurn mobster - No relation not even a McGurn :(
Today - have a huge family back to 1800's :)
Jean
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... a family story is not family history until you have proved it...
Eric
Best quote of the day so far and very apt for me today. I'm having a discussion with someone about the identity of people in a photo & he desperately wants it to be certain family members but there's no evidence to show it is them at all!
:)
Sorry, went over 25 words!
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It's still early today, but yesterday I found out that a house lived in by a distant family connection (we're talking cousin-in-laws several times removed) in San Francisco in the 1930s (and is still standing) was built before the 1906 earthquake. I don't know much about architecture, but I like looking at buildings, and this fact impressed me.
Having a look in the local library (as you do) to see what else I could find out about the earthquake, I found a children's book that said the fire that followed caused more damage than the earthquake itself. It went into the details of the fire engines of the time and said that dogs were associated with fire wagons (pulled by horses at that time) because they ran along barking to warn people to get out of the way. This was new to me. I had wondered what the point of the fire dogs was. Were they dalmations? It didn't say. But the point is, a lot of the things I find out don't involve my relatives.
Okay, I admit it. Twenty-five words was an impossibly short limit!
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Yesterday actually. :)
Some kind person here on RootsChat found for me all of the schools my grandfather taught at along with dates. Before this I only knew him as a military man (from my research) and an old man (I knew him very well in his later years).
Paul
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Well not today but a while ago -never write anything in ink until 100% confimed.It took a lot of correcting fluid to learn this.
Ed
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Simples! You will never find out everything. There will always be something to surprise you.
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lol
For every person you find ............ theres ALWAYS at least the 2 people who created him/her to find!
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Talk to elderly relatives, they are an absolute fountain of knowledge for starting out! And if at first you don't succeed, try and try again
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Five neanderthals came out of Africa - we are all related to one of them.
Hi cousins!
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Perserverence - never found an Irish record 'til today!
Looking for an Irish/Scottish ancestor's actual birth and up popped her mother's death in 1844. Needed a cuppa to get over the shock. :o :o :o