to think family history isn't dull or irrelevant??

[GenieGenealogy]

So my user name probably gives it away - but I am interested in family history / genealogy and have been for years. Decades probably. Have lots of friends and connections who are interested too, from across the world.

Recently met a new person through an unrelated social group and we got chatting about what we did in our free time, I said I was interested in researching my family history and she went into a rant about how dull that must be, how it's completely irrelvant to anyone's life, why on earth anyone would be interested in Sarah who died in 1855 or John who went to America in 1899 and so on.

So do you find it interesting or dull or why? (Or is it something you just don't give any thought to?)

I think its important to know which stones not to kick. I did a little bit, found the grandparents wedding certificate (apparently 5 years before they got married!) And my dad just said... thats wrong. It was enough of a clue that wasn't a mystery to solve.

I'd also like to know what happened to my other grandfather in WWII but respect there a reason he never told anyone. We have the letter he wrote to his mother when he was released from the POW camp and we are currently trying to work out whether to see if a museum would be interested or just to leave it in the box.

I must admit, I do have fun winding people up with that fact sometimes 😂

I find it fascinating. Your ancestors make you what you are. I feel the same about the history of this country, and I'm interested in it for the same reason. Most of my ancestors were British. So the history and literature of this country is a part of me. It moulded and shaped my ancestors, who moulded and shaped the people who birthed and raised me. I traced one family line back to 1380, which was the decade in which Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. My 20 times great grandfather was living in Kent, where The Canterbury Tales is set, in the decade in which Chaucer wrote the poem. Amazing.

It isn't a question of pride or shame (I could write a book on all the things I hate about this country, from The Sun newspaper to the royal family). It's just what I am. I feel it when I watch films or read novels. For example, I re-watched the Godfather trilogy recently. They are good films, but I'm not an Italian-American. It isn't my culture or identity, and I feel it strongly. When I watch my favourite British films, however – Withnail and I, Oliver Twist, Lawrence of Arabia, etc – there is a sense of rapport. These are 'my people'.

I agree - what a strange person! Sounds as if a button was pressed.

I find anyone who starts droning on about their extended family deeply dull (their conversation, not them as a person) and researching family history is an extension of that. BUT I can perfectly understand the fascination for the one finding out about their own family. As long as they understand why others may not.

I enjoy social history though, just not your relatives' 😁

I used to think it was very dull, but when I turned 50 I changed my mind. I never met my grandad but would give anything to chat with him for a few hours. He died when I was a tiny baby.

It’s not just about the certificates though as a pp posted. You can link to Newspaper reports or railway archives or various other things. I never knew my great grandmother witnessed a murder for example.

In my case it was kicked off when I was a child by a great uncle who used to tell some pretty tall tales about the family’s past. As I uncover more I often find a grain of truth in some of his stories.

It’s slso a link with my late DF as we did a lot of the initial research together.

I'm interested in fh, and the person who spoke to you like that is very rude.
But I know that it's very niche and don't expect anyone else to enjoy it.
Also, I think it's a shame that so many genealogists are so keen to get results that they put up false information on site like ancestry, just because they want it to be true.

I also find social history much more interesting.

I've discovered two quite dark family secrets as a result of researching the family tree. It makes me feel sad that we have uncovered something that someone didn't want known about them and made sugnificant efforts to hide. Nothing immoral or criminal but socially unacceptable and shameful at the time. I can't help but think it was best left where it was to protect their dignity.

Recently met a new person through an unrelated social group and we got chatting about what we did in our free time, I said I was interested in researching my family history

Was this all that you said or did you start telling her about what you had found out about your family?

I think telling people about your family history is a bit like telling people about a weird dream that you had - it's fine if you can do it in a short sentence ("I had a dream that I was being chased by a vampire who could only be killed with turnips"/"I found out that I am distant relation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel") but deathly dull if it's any longer than that.

Aw, the first forum I was on was Genes Reunited, decades ago. I fell in love with research and learned a lot from the other members. Became real life friends with a few.

Just 2 days ago I dug out a mini-tree I'd sorted for a friend about 20 years ago. Her niece had asked me about it on FB as her young son got interested at school. She hasn't yet said it arrived but it made me happy to know a youngster had the bug.

@AaaahBlandsHatch

It means babies born to unmarried parents .

Fascinating the researcher, less so to the person hearing about it, in my opinion!

I delve into it periodically as you can build a story around the facts my g.grandmother and her sister lived in the north of england were orphaned and then sent to london to work in service in the 1890"s. Was sent to prison as a suffragette. A male relative found guilty of stealing ink was deported to australia, was ill on the journey but made it to Oz. I have twins and my g.g grandfather has the same name as one of my twins. I havent been able to establish if his brother (g.g.granfathers') was born either the same year or the following year had a similar name to my own childs twin (4 letter name, 2 letters difference) another was one of florence nightingales nurses who was sacked by F.N as she allegedley had maintained a secret for a young womans pregnancy in F.Ns employ. F.N did not have such a glowing reputation anongst the older generation of our family! ( all of who are now deceased)

This!!

My mum loves this stuff. I found it utterly dull and boring lol but I feign interest and chat with her about it. Your friend is extremely rude op!

Social history is interesting and not as well documented as the history of kings/queens, empires and wars.

Why wouldn't people in council houses be interested in their ancestry?

Read the post. I didn't say that. I said that being descended from royalty conferred no benefit to one today, no matter if you are living the life of riley or happily in a councilnhouse.
Not that they wouldnt be interested

I have no interest in finding out about my family. It's just something that feels irrelevant to me. My ancestors are a bunch of people I never met, I'm no more interested in them than any other stranger alive at the same time as them. I'm not close to my living family, so perhaps that's why I don't care about the family before that.

I'd be interested if I had a particularly interesting relative (scandal, grand achievement, general celebrity) but I'd be interested in that person if they weren't my relation as well.

I wouldn’t be rude enough to slag off the idea of learning about your family to someone who clearly was interested, though.

I think it's a bit like dreams - your own is fascinating but hearing about someone else's is boring (unless there are particular dark or scandalous secrets). The other person was very rude though.

I find it fascinating. I loved researching both sides of my family.

So yes boring to anyone else, but….i spent 4 weeks blitzing on genealogy sites after my dad died this year (age 88) and I finally got my hands on old family records from his and mums side (she died 25 years ago).
if I’d not done that we’d not know;

1. my eldest dc lives in a flat in London literally overlooking the house my mum grew up in until age 5. That’s an extraordinary spooky coincidence becuase she moved from London age 5 ( after blitz) and none of family lived in London till my son moved there age 21 after graduating. He only moved to this particular district of London 8 months ago, having lived in various parts for last 9 years. We didn’t know my mum lived in this area. He can literally see into rear upstairs windows she would have looked out of as a child
2. we wouldn’t have known that the odd ginger hair gene , or ginger beard, is likely due to Irish ancestory 5 generations ago - something none of us knew where it cropped up from
3. that my aunt was actually my mums half sister…both now dead some years ago but explains why they looked nothing like each other and were massively dissimilar and massive age gap
4. that we can trace back one side of family to 1550s . And they weren’t peasant farm labours we thought but trades and guilds . In the city I was born in and didn’t know previous generations had lived and worked there 200 years earlier for about 150 years. One of properties they lived at, and assume worked at, was in same road as my primary school. Ok, this isn’t massive coincidence like first one, our family didn’t move much for centuries and centuries, even back before 1550. But we simply didn’t know they’d lived in this city and were more guilds and trades than labourers. It’s interesting for us!
5. that my somewhat wayward grandmother ( ok, she had rep for being flighty and eloped aged 18 with 32 year old grandad ! ) lost her dad at age of 2. Records show he killed himself by jumping overboard from his ship with fever ( serving in Royal Navy in 1910s). Tragic and horrendous but not apparently that unusual. No wonder she was wayward, they were living off charity of her paternal uncle who was labourer bachelor with her mum housekeeping for him with 6 kids.

and a whole lot more. Once you dig you find some remarkable stories. But they’re only remarkable if you are curious about how your family circumstances affected your family through the generations. Decisions taken by my parents, were affected by theirs, who were affected by theirs etc. geography alone has played a huge roll in my upbringing . As has the oppportunities in each generation based on their circumstances.

each to their own. Don’t really care if others find it too boring to find out for themselves. Just reeks of lack of curiosity…and that’s always a big marker for intelligence and wisdom. Imhe.

Which is why a lot of people like me focus on maternal lines!
and also, nuture as well as nature can influence you. You may not have your fathers DNA, but if he was one that was your “dad” your entire life and as far as legal,records show, that would have had a big impact on what that individuals future life was like.
social mobility, pre 1962 and the start of our brief access to free degrees, was a lot blimmin harder. I can see that in my family history, generations working for same company in low paid menial work. It was my mum and dad that started to break that. But my generation were the ones that broke free through that change in education act. Geographically mobility came with that. One side of my family barely moved 30 miles from around probably back to 1066, and certainly from earliest definitive records in 1550s, to 1960s!

In a lot of cases you can get employment information
you get to see who was living with whom. Where, exactly, to the house, they lived. That tells you enormous amounts about lives they would have lived.
you can find out what they died of. How old they were at death.
you can find a lot more info from newspapers than just criminal records.
you can find things in old house deeds
you can understand historic wealth from old wills going back centuries leaving the most bizarre things
in many cases you can glean more than snippets about each person, and build up inter generational picture of the families

astonishingly All this shit is now geneology sites. It took me 4 weeks intensive research to uncover masses about how my family and evolved. Used mostly free trial periods by staggering them. I won’t do any more…l got what I wanted , wrote it all upon PowerPoint for next generation and enjoyed the process and results.

I don't mean to say that's not all very interesting, but do you have any thoughts on my other point about "lines" (or sides as you've gone with).

1066 is about 30 generations ago, so you have something like a billion ancestors (obviously there'd be lots of crossovers so not actually that many, but still an enormous amount). How can you possibly talk about "one side" of your family as a cohesive unit that have all done similar things?