My father's parents divorced when he was a toddler and he never saw his mother again.
This was the first family I researched when I started a few years ago. My father and his parents were deceased by then.
All I had was a birth date (off by one year) for my grandmother and nicknames for her parents. I eventually was able to learn quite a bit, not only on my direct line but on the many branches of my grandmother's family tree. (The whole family is meaningful to me; not one is ever just a name.)
I contacted the man who is
the researcher for my great-grandfather's family name. He has put his tree online and descendants are always sending him info to add to it (with their permission). This man helped me in three significant ways. He is the reason why I always like to help other people with their genealogy (it's also my nature to be helpful, but he set the example for me).
Through dogged persistence, lots of work and lots of money, I was able to obtain vital documents that contained some answers without giving me the ultimate answer to the question
why. It turned out that my grandmother and her siblings were abandoned by their mother. My great-grandparents went on to remarry new spouses (although not legally) and didn't tell the children from their second marriages about their first families.
Every time I learned something new, it was invariably sad. My mother kept saying, "Are you sure you want to keep doing this? Don't you want to find a happier hobby?"
I, too, wanted to know where this unhappiness all started and why. Although I learned an awful lot, I still don't know why, although I can make a few guesses.
Sometimes I play a mental game: I ask myself, how far back would I have to go in time for my father to have been alright?
- His parents.
- His grandparents.
- His great-grandparents.
But if they had made all the right choices, my parents wouldn't have met and I wouldn't be here.
As others have said, the most important thing is that the cycle of (whatever) stops.
Also, I notice a huge difference in what we will discuss versus what our parents or aunties will discuss. In the past, people wouldn't want to discuss the unpleasant stuff with some of us, although it seems they all knew about it.
If there are still people in the family who are older than you, try to talk to them and see what they will share. In the case of aunts and uncles, you could also talk to their children. There's a lot of family history contained in memories and stories that are never written down and are not found in BMDs. These risk being lost to time. In some cases, relatives might think that is ultimately for the best, but I'd rather know about it and make up my own mind.
Regards,
Josephine
