Motivation for research?

[ownpe]

Hi,

I would like to know about your motivations for researching past generations, root around in your family tree and so on. What are you after? Just wondering 

[KGarrad]

Both my grandfathers died before I was born - so I knew very little about my family.

I started before the days of the internet - used excellent resources at Bristol Central Library - and soon found my paternal grandfather's "missing" 2nd marriage and divorce!

By then I was hooked!

[rosiemagic]

My mum was the last person of her family with her maiden name (Mears).  And I was embarassed by how little I knew about that family....

[nainmaddie]

Absolute nosiness !!

I had a family Welsh dresser handed down through the female line.

St Fagan's museum near Cardiff were able to help me pinpoint the area that it was made, and off I went.  That was in 1992.  I am still stuck on one line since I started !!!!

[Rena]

The first thing to spur me was learning we had a Great War casualty killed in action but I didn't know how he fitted into the family.   I originally thought that I would stop there, but once bitten twice shy as the saying goes and I then turned my attention to researching stories I'd heard as a child (such as a lost family fortune).

It came as a surprise to realise that objects used by the parents of my OH and I hadn't been bought by that generation but had belonged to earlier ancestors, such as the shoe last that my father used to use when hammering stegs into my brothers' boots had travelled over county boundaries and had been used by a shoemaker 100 years earlier.

It had never crossed my mind prior to this hobby that some things are "all in the genes".  For instance out of the blue one cousin had an overwhelming urge and "just had to go to sea" and my own daughter "just had to make pottery".   I found there were19th century potters in one line and another 18th/19th century line was stuffed full of sailors.

[oldfashionedgirl]

23 years (and counting) with a married surname I knew nothing about !

My in-laws died before I met my husband, my brother in law gave me an old brown suitcase full of photos, letters and certificates. He and my husband only knew bits of their family history and I set out to find the truth (and i'm nosey )

I didn't appreciate in those early days what a treasure trove i'd been given, but I do now !!

[Alexander.]

I don't know what I'm after, but it did help beginning with a rare surname on my mum's side...and I'm still trying to work out where it came from.

It all started with my little sister's school project where she had to make a family tree. I was so jealous - I never got to do this project when I had been in the same class. Needless to say, I had far more fun with it than she did. So I started by talking to my elderly grandparents, and learned that granddad had close to 20 aunts and uncles (not to mention each of their spouses). Granddad couldn't even remember all of their names, so it became my quest to find out. The rest, as they say, is history.

But at least I have an excuse - it was all my sister's fault. She should never have asked me to help her with her homework.

[larkspur]

My great uncle told me his mother was Scottish, I thought that was so exotic, never having been outside Nottinghamshire, I was 12. The bug had hit, 40 years later Iam still on the chase.

[groom]

When I was young my grandmother told me that her mother had been drowned during the launch of a ship on the river Thames and how at the age of 15, and the eldest of 6 siblings, she had to bring up her brothers and sisters. However being young, and at that time with no interest in family history, I just half listened. Years later, long after my grandmother had died, my uncle also mentioned the same incident, but this time the name HMS Albion came up. I researched the tragedy, found my great grandmother's name and that was it, I was hooked. Of course my biggest regret is that I didn't ask my grandmother more when I had the opportunity.

Jan