Why do people research their genealogy/family tree?

[excelen]

My brother is obsessed with researching our ancestry. I couldn’t care less, they’re almost always dead… we come from a long line of lower middle class farmers. How exciting.

Why do people research it?

Because it's as valid a hobby as any other, I for instance don't get the interest in hitting a white ball around a large field for hours. I'm intrigued by the stories of those gone before us, how they lived, why they died. I'm fascinated by history of people and places. Sometimes you even find out something really interesting like a great grand aunt who was executed for murder nearly 200 years ago or that my DH's great x3 grandfather landed in an Irish port, having come from the Caribbean.

Found seeing one grandfather's name handwritten on the census form very moving. Never knew him as he died in his 40's and my DM moved away from him when she was 9 so she never really knew him either. Have no idea what he was like but that handwriting, which might not even be his, made me feel connected. Have a large part of my family which was swept away by various wars that took place in Europe and can only trace their lives though records and perhaps glimpses of what their day to day life was. Yes the present & the future are more important but I also want to know more about my family origins. History often repeats itself and I'm fascinated by patterns of all types.

I was curious about who my parents were and where they were from, and who their parents and grandparents were and where they were from. What languages did they speak? What did they eat? Why did they leave their old countries, were they migrants or refugees? It’s incredible what you can find out.

I have been dipping into this on and off for a few years - and with hindsight wish I had asked the older generation for more information. It is interesting especially when you can read old newspaper articles or see passengers manifests for when and where they travelled.
My family name has connections with a well known sporting activity but which was sold out of the family many moons ago - so researching the history of that is something I have yet to investigate. Especially as this is still something in print currently and updated regularly. But sadly not something any of us in the family will get rich on 😂

@cardinalcat

We are all pretty meaningless and insignificant in the context of the entire universe

This is almost what blows my mind about genealogy, we are just 1 of billions of people that have ever lived and those billions of people are an absolutey miniscule part of the universe that we really are totally insignificant.

But then at the same time genealogy shows you how many sliding door moments, chance meetings of people, survival of the fittest in far far far tougher conditions than we live in now, and that 1 sperm and 1 egg of the thousands/millions that have been produced throughout the generations that have lead to every single one of our ancestors being born and then ultimately every single one of us even being here at all is really not insignificant at all.

Because it helps you understand who you are and where you have come from. I have some amazing ancestors - nobody famous, mostly farm labourers, or working down the pits or in the mills but my goodness they all lived a life worth living. It makes me feel so humble to learn about them. My Grandpa's big brother who died in the Somme at 18 years old. It explains why my Grandpa (too young to enlist for WW1 and fast approaching 40 years old when WW2 broke out) enlisted on day one of WW2. He did it for his brother 😪

I love it, had always meant to get round to it and spent a lot of time during lockdown on Ancestry. I am a PhD researcher so it's right up my street, although you do need to triangulate the information you find- cross reference it with other sources, such as
DNA via Ancestry and general info online from good sources. Base your tree on solid primary sources such as censuses, parish records and birth/death records on Ancestry.
It's fascinating social history and often shows you how a culture and society was built. For instance, the coal miners and cotton weavers that powered the Industrial Revolution were your ancestors.

Lots of people do hobbies that I find baffling, each to their own. Personally I've always been fascinated with history and have a very small disconnected family so wanted to find out more. I started researching over 20 years ago and got hooked. Some of the things you discover are heartbreaking but a lot are interesting and can be put into context of global events and recently DS1 used some a my research to do a project on WW1.

Have you never watched Who do you Think You Are? Some of the stories they uncover are fascinating, and a great hook on which to hang historical education.

If you’ve never watched it I recommend the Sarah Millican one. Ann Reid also good. And the one with the guy who plays Mrs Brown in Mrs Brown’s Boys was unexpectedly moving even though I can’t stand his comedy.

Curiosity about where they come from.

I’ve always been interested in history but more social & industrial history than kings/queens/battles type history.
Also my parents were not very nice people. I had very limited contact with other relatives , anyone we children liked or started to form any relationship with was cut off.
So during lockdown it was something to do online. I found some sad stories — a mother who died young leaving 5 daughters. The youngest was kept and lived in a tiny multi- generational household. The 4 older girls , all under 11, were sent to an industrial school and later emigrated with a number of other ‘orphans’ to Canada, under the supervision of the school director. ( who actually got a good write up ) All 4 girls lived to old age, 3 married.The youngest who stayed in Britain died aged 25.

You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t where you’ve been.

Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

OP, your post gave me a much needed laugh, but in a good way. Yawn, they are all dead, and were peasants anyway, what do I care? 🤣

I’ve no interest in my own family’s genealogy as I find the situation of women in particular absolutely heartbreaking. Go back just a few generations and women universally lived lives of great suffering - domestic/church abuse, children dying, complete lack of self determination, and if they were poor, which my fore-bearers certainly would have been, also a good measure of backbreaking labour.

Not true anymore.

I've traced via paperwork and now have DNA to work with. The shared matches are proving/disproving the paperwork.

For the most part it is matching what we thought on paper. There's one area in my mum's family where I've yet to find a DNA match - it doesn't surprise me for two reasons. Firstly there wasn't many siblings so it's possible that there's just no descendants who have taken a DNA test or it could be because the woman concerned was on her third husband by this point with two having died. There's some interesting stuff around her brother in the newspaper which raises questions about what she was up to and her lifestyle. And then there's a whole backstory about the man she married who should be my biological relative. Family oral history says he was a war hero in one place. Paperwork says he fought in a completely different war, was dishonourable discharged after he murdered someone and he spent a number of years in prison.

So that in itself is all very interesting and tells me about her life. I may find a DNA connection at some point or I may be able to trace an unexplained line which would seem in roughly the right time or location (so far I've not spotted something which suggests that, and I've matched the majority of my mum's closest matches so I know how they relate to my mum. With few unexplained ones, I've nothing that suggests a missing branch).

I think the stories of peoples lives is much more interesting than people realise. Even 'boring' families tell you something about history and why you family is the way it is.

My great grandfather was 18 in 1918. Some paperwork was saved by the family. It was an application to join the air force. But he clearly never sent it. The survival rate for pilots in WWI was scary. The training was next to none existent. For whatever reason he joined the army instead. We have his medals and he wrote a diary which wasn't permitted.

From the diary we know his location and which battles he was involved in.

Early in 1918 not long after he landed in France he was hospitalised with flu. This almost certainly would have been the first wave of Spanish flu. It had a devastating effect on young men his age in the main wave but the first wave was much milder. It probably gave him immunity so potentially saved his life later on having had that early exposure.

Being in hospital at the period he was, also meant he missed the last few offensives by the Germans which left the British with large numbers of casualties. In short, flu meant he missed the worst of 1918 on the front lines.

By the time he returned to the front line, the tide had changed and the German army was starting to collapse. He was involved in a few of the last battles of the war, but the number who died was significantly less than had been the case in the proceeding weeks he'd missed.

So there were three things that seemed to work in his favour in terms of luck. Luck many other men just didn't have.

So it depends on the depth of the information you can find out. Just knowing my great grandfather was a soldier in WWI isn't that interesting. Having the rest of the information and then matching that with army records and his diary makes it come alive and tells you stuff about subsequent generations

My grandfather, his son, would go on to enlist in WWII as a pilot and that was also his career after the war. His maternal grandfather had been a photographer in WWI teaching the pilots how to do air reconnaissance which was a totally new piece of military history so there was clearly a lot of influence from both sides of the family.

In the forlorn hope that they will.discover that they don't 'come from a long line of lower middle class farmers'?

I come from a long line of agricultural labourers who barely left their small district for centuries.

I was delighted to find one who was arrested for sheep stealing, with newspaper reports, and description of him when he was transported to Australia. It was amazing to 'hear' his words quoted from when he was arrested, a description of his tattoos, height etc, it felt like time travel.

I do enjoy history, and it's not all about the famous figures, it's insights like those of my ancestor, and because it's an ancestor it's that much more personal and interesting.

What interests do YOU have OP?

Wow, different people are interested in different things - who knew

What a ridiculous question.

Some people like history. They want to know about their own families and might be interested in the social history that is shown on the census forms from 1841 to 1901. You look for your own family and see the occupations of the other people on that street/lane.
If you're interested in it it can be quite addictive. As soon as you discover something it makes you wonder about something else.
One of my late relations would have loved to sit next to me, poring over census forms and anything else which Ancestry has to offer. One of his siblings couldn't have given a damn about the family tree!
You can be quite surprised by what you find, sometimes.

I enjoy social history. For example I discovered four people who were sent to Canada as children in the early 20th century and when I did ancestry dna I was matched with some of their descendants.
I found an unexpected DNA 'region' and a group of fairly close DNA matches all of whom have the same region and are matched with each other. I am now trying to find out how I am connected. It also ties in with a family story about someone's father not being their biological father.

To my complete surprise, I found that a great grandfather had emigrated to USA, 1880ish, with wife and 8 kids, with an additional one born en route. He was a Welsh miner, so they would have travelled as cheaply as possible, 2 or more weeks in steerage. They stayed for few years then all returned to Wales. You would think this would be a family story but no. Never mentioned by anyone until I found it in some records. Vanished from history within 3 generations. Still baffles me.

Why isn’t it interesting? I find the history of ordinary people fascinating. I pour over old photos to try to glimpse what life was like. The expressions, shop frontages - it’s so interesting.

DM did her side of the tree a few years ago and I drove her around various rural Scottish farms as she wanted to see where x or y was born and we found their graves.

there is something strangely comforting to see yourself in your line of ancestors, especially when you are suffering yourself. It puts it in context.

My dad loves it. I was fairly uninterested until I was pregnant, then I felt I wanted to feel more connected to my heritage and wanted to know more about my partner's family history so that we can ensure that the stories are passed on.

I knew nothing of my family. Didn’t know my parents’ names, my family history, my ethnicity… absolutely nothing. It’s a very unsettling way to be.

The internet has enabled me to find out a lot. I started researching back in the late 1990’s and since then have contacted a number of family members. At the age of 68 I saw my mother for the first time when I was given photos of her. She is dead but I still hope that I may have time to contact my father.