Second Helpings

Who do you think you are?

I'm going through one of my family research phases and driving myself round the bend with it. Like many other things I question why I do it, what's the point of researching a load of dead people and who would be the slightest bit interested when I join them? But again like many other things I get involved in it becomes a bit obsessive compulsive and I find myself totally absorbed as well as entering the realms of fantasy.

My mother's parents I remember very well, but sadly research only allows me to go back three generations before hitting brick walls on both sides. Marriage splits, children being raised by grandparents and the repetition of pretty common names means finding information is difficult. I conclude all females in that era were named Mary, Elizabeth or Sarah and all males were Henry, John or Thomas.

Without discrediting my mum's heritage, my Dad's American family is far more absorbing and easier to research. We had quite an unusual surname which makes it pretty certain that anyone with the same name is related one way or another. But the tree just grows and grows, at present going back eight generations landing back in England with over fifty surnames involved. There are some pretty impressive and fascinating Christian names too like Euphemia, Cassafema, Napoleon, Ephraim and George Washington. It makes my head spin when I Iook at the size of the families. Some were married two or three times and had a dozen kids with each wife. But I guess without them all I wouldn't be sitting here today wondering what life was like for all of them. There were certainly some interesting characters and tragedies involved.

Theres some fascinating place names too and my descendants seem to be spread all over the States. I'm rapidly concluding I must be related to everyone in the USA. Then my head goes off on one and I wonder how far back it's possible to trace family trees and if ultimately we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. But what was their surname? The scientific road would take us back to Neanderthal times. Maybe we all originated from Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

As the song goes, the more I find out the less I know...

Is genealogy a waste of time or an important way of helping us discover who we are?