Oh boy, what have I not learned and still learning. I hated history at school couldn't see the relevance of it, but loved geography ( could have been the teacher, well I know it was the teacher) Oh how I wish they had taught genealogy/family history as that would have made history relevant to me and I am sure to so many others too.
So when I started with only one goal which was only to find out my grandmothers name I soon became hooked, at that time looking around at the 'oldies' sitting in the records office I felt out of place, but soon learned that they had so much knowledge and helped beyond expectations and I really looked forward to seeing my new friends and still keep in touch with some decades later.
The thing that stands out is "how to research" that sure helped me in my degree, how to prove, attention to detail, creative problem solving, interviewing skills and to trust my instincts as they are generally correct even if not obvious at the beginning, those names jump out like flashing lights saying " its me you need you just don't know it as yet" proved so many times in later years when looking back at my old note books of information I had transcribed for no other reason than the name jumped out at me yet it was some random name in some random place at that time.
I improved my language skills had to brush up on my French ( hated that at school too) and learn some Latin, new terminology, finding written records I never knew existed and feeling pride in my ancestry as I read a letter written to the King asking permission to build a hospital and reading the reply and signed by him, now that took me in a completely different search learning about Knights Hospitallers and finding a road named after my ancestor where this hospital and alms houses were, so he lives on centuries after he died.
It has enabled me into places and to meet people that I would never had been given access to or met and to records that I would have never seen being "just me" like the actual manorial records still held by the family in the Hall, supposedly copied by the Heralds during their visitation, certainly on that country comparing the two the Heralds were the copy and paste merchants( online trees) of that time and the make it up as they go along marrying 'families' together where there is no record of any marriage in the real records
Social history and that " people didn't get divorced they stayed married" maybe not but they still had affairs and still left to be with someone else or " people remained locally as travel was difficult" simply they still travelled and faced the difficulty or " it would have not happened in your great grandfathers time" but "it" did they just didn't tell anyone, the marvels of medical advances we all take for granted now and that many people and companies are using "medicines" that we now call homeopathic, alternative or complimentary yet really should be called traditional
Photography and later on digital photography, IT, website building, databases and that instinct of going to a place you have never been to before but seem to feel at home and 'know' about it, even moving to and migrating to places that are completely 'new' to me then finding an ancestor lived/worked there before and that has happened in every place I have lived.
Family scripts, repeating jobs, repeating skills and naming one of my children a very unusual name only to find out later that it was a 'family name' even down to the unusual spelling, not used for 150 years but records going back of its use for centuries.
Realising that what I know is a drop in the ocean compared to what I don't know and still with lots to learn. That are lives are entwinded and often complicated and it was no different back then.
Lots of these things help me to make sense of things, to capture memories forever, for me not just on paper or a database but also to use my skills in textile design so thankyou ancestors for that creative gene ( and of course lots of encouragement to practise and 2 years additionally of textile art qualification) and create family history textile art
