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 would still watch WDYTYA if it wasn't famous people (actually half the time I have no idea who the celebrities are!), it's the stories that interest me.
I have been researching my family tree for over 20 years and have been fortunate to be able to help others as part of my job. I love finding out about ancestors but I also the challenge of finding that elusive person or record.

I got the family history bug when I had a lot of spare time during Covid. I researched a 'family myth' - a great aunt had spent decades trying to verify what had been considered in the family to be a tall story about supposed links to a former grand ancestral home. This was pre internet and she was never able to prove the family connection. With the help of Ancestry etc, I was able to prove beyond any doubt that the ancestral home story was absolutely true. Other family lines have proved equally interesting to me in the social history stories that emerged.

I've also had some lovely instances of thinking 'if only I had a photo of GG Grandfather' etc, and then finding through connections on genealogy sites that such a photo has survived, passed down through a different branch of the family.

I'm sure my own family history is probably only of real interest to me and my own family; but it has created many interesting conversations with older cousins and distant relatives.

I'm not remotely interested in genealogy tbh, but the woman was unnecessarily rude!

Ancestry getting 1921 census this spring!

1921 Census is on Ancestry right now. From 7 January.

I have very little interest in family history. Although my mum’s very keen on it and has set up her ancestry thing to email me whenever she updates our family tree.

But I wouldn’t go off on a massive rant about the dullness of it to anyone who mentioned that they were interested in family history. That’s terribly rude.
I’m pretty sure her hobbies and interests aren’t going to fascinate every single person she meets either!

I find it fascinating, too, and history in general as well. Must be catching because my older son has just started at university doing a history degree.
Other people find things immensely absorbing that I find dull (watching sport, for example) and I'm completely comfortable with the idea that some people equally find family history or social history tedious.
I wouldn't go on a rant about how watching football is mind-numbingly boring and <continues for some time> and I'd think it rude if someone did the same in reverse.
YANBU.

So my “advantage” is an extremely rare maiden name. And very local to a very specific part of one county in England up to 1840. There even a tiny hamlet called “marsh” place in this area. Very pretty too with a few houses and farm buildings from 1600s. In 1800s, Industrial Revolution , the name spread out further to the same county going to an area roughly 70 square miles . That made for some very interesting social history. But only post WW1 did the name make it out of that county with exception of some brave souls in east anglia in 1700s. By 1950/60s a few went rogue and went to Canada and Australia. And then by 1980s spread in pockets through england. There’s now a small branch in north England whom I’m extremely closely related with ( my family), but none others than those. I was also born, in 1960s within this same area the branch records started out 500 years earlier . Literally within 30 square miles .not an adventurous lot 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

you can get all this on ancestory sites that can locate names vs locations back to 1840. But there are still only 600 people with this name world wide even now. Apparently. Because women marry and the line breaks off. It wasn’t even that the family had few children, during 1800 there were regularly 12,14 kids and most making past infancy.

I think it says that most of us carry family names that started in multiple unconnected families ( eg smith, or my married name which whilst not common has 10s of thousands with it ) . So when you search there are loads of completely separate linages. Whereas a rare name will produce a linage that converges very quickly onto a common ancestory.

because my maiden name it’s so rare, there’s been a lot of research . Especially die hard genealogists from usa branches, who made a pilgramidge to cathedral records and parish churches back to 1550 and added to basic genealogy site info. Copies of records like wills are now out there to see. Pre that it gets very dodgy as spelling varies hugely on church records…and that gets muddled with other similar names. so there is only superficial links to doomsday mentions…but the name is likley Saxon, so was about pre William the bastard and 1066 in one spelling or another for them that could write. Which most of them couldn’t. Probably.

sure, I have billion ancestors ( actually this isn’t entirely correct due to pedigree collapse and the obvious ancestor “ paradox”, but yep a huge number still) and only a the straight paternal route of those carry this name from this linage. The other family names I went down focused on maternal lines, and could only get back to 1750s reliably, and in one case 1790s. Mainly cos women have less records individually and going is much harder.

I never said I was part of a single cohesive unit! your words, not mine. Just that the various branches yielded some very interesting stuff. But this maiden name branch down the paternal line, is a very clear line, just because it is so rare. Ignoring points made by previous poster re DNA and nature vs nuture, given we weren’t very adventurous, and vocations stuck for many generations in same location, it does make a pretty cohesive story.

Yep, I would be interested to know if geneology is an affliction of the old age when we loose older generations, and even our parents

i wasnt much interested all the time my parents were alive. Then they died and I realised I didn’t know this or that. And then I just wanted to know. I was early 60s when I looked into it.

I think older age also allow you to see the legacy handed down through generations. Good and bad. When you see how 3rd generation of your/ your siblings/ your cousins descendants is carrying that legacy, you ask yourself whose legacy am I carrying

when you’re younger you really, really don’t want to think that who you are is anyway affected by previous generations, let alone that you can carry these fragments of legacy from various parts of your family ancestors. The horror of thinking that 😱

I was very clear about what I wanted to know. What lines I was going to research. It was focused. It took just 4 weeks, intensive effort. That was it. Got what I wanted. Won’t look any more now. But it answered a lot of questions, has been a source of some surprise and astonishment , in good ways, for family.

I can't get very far with my paternal surname, as it is a very common surname indeed, and from a part of Wales where people changed their surname for no apparent reason too.
I've been lucky to get one maternal line back to the 1700s in London, which is very rare to be able to do because there were so many small parishes and people most inconsiderately moved between them. Yours sound fun!

It might be more common later in life @Marshbird but certainly not the only way. I became interested in my late teens and early 20s because of stories and tales from my Granny, and did most of my research when I was at university and in the holidays. My grandmother was very interested which encouraged me, and couldn't then do it herself - not much was then available electronically so it was a question of trolling through records in local offices.

I have a couple of relatives who’ve researched my family and some of what they’ve discovered is quite interesting, tbh, especially my Mum’s side.

American DH’s auntie has done some research on their family and that’s interesting, because they’re such a melting pot, ancestors from several different countries.

Actually I think it’s because they were so boringly stuck in their ways generation to,generation that makes it easy to find. 🤣.

It was a lot of birth / marriage/ death registers and some addresses. Nothing more about the people.

You know what they did for a living, and that can be interesting, if it was an unusual occupation, or one that was important locally. You know where or if they moved around, and can speculate why that might have been. You can look up the addresses on old maps (free on Ordnance Survey Maps - Map Images - National Library of Scotland ) or Google Street View to see what kind of houses they were, and if they survive. You can look up the Census returns (1881 is free to access) which will tell you more. If you have any relatives of an age to have served in either of the World Wars, you can find out if they died and if they were buried in a Commonwealth War Cemetery. Lives of the First World War | Lives of the First World War The Commonwealth War Graves Commission | CWGC both free.

And if you feel like paying for a subscription you can access local newspapers on Home | Search the archive | British Newspaper Archive or Home | findmypast.co.uk where you might find all kinds of information - weddings, funerals, inquests, brave deeds, criminal acts and more. .

I don't just research my own family, I research families who lived locally as part of local history research. (Only 1921 backwards, I don't pursue them down to the present day.) It's always interesting to start on a new family, because you never know where the research is going to take you.

Personally, I prefer to say 'family history' rather than genealogy, because it does suggest a broader, more social history oriented approach.

I think they're fascinating

But even if they didn't, I wouldn't say so

I'm not really interested tbh but my mum is.

Turns out her dad isn't who she thought and she had 8 half siblings she didn't know about. She feels a real connection with them. I do not, at all. To me, they're just random people. I'm not really sure why I don't feel anything more....

Actually I think it’s because they were so boringly stuck in their ways generation to,generation that makes it easy to find.

My paternal line is the same. Unusual name, stayed in the same rural location for hundreds of years. Maternal line much harder with common names and moviing between Scotland and Ireland

We did our family trees before we got married and joined them up at our wedding reception and everyone who was there signed their name by their entry.

My grandfather jumped ship in America and opened a restaurant in NY and left it in the hands of his brother who gambled it away. He returned and married and also had a concubine and was a very successful merchant trader, the communists seized his house, it’s a museum now. Plus the Japanese invasion meant my baby Aunt died. My English great grandparents were Victorian industrialists that owned a large factory and their London home is now worth an eye watering fortune. It is very like the house in Upstairs Downstairs. My grandmother married a sergeant major so as she ‘married down’ was disowned.

Whereas DH great great grandfather died from falling off a haystack at about 70, slightly less exciting. @Marshbird DH has an ancient Anglo Saxon name that is incredibly rare, it has been very useful.

My family also stayed in the same place for generations, which made them easy to find - but a chronic lack of imagination when it came to names created a researcher's nightmare of siblings bringing up families all named after the same grandparents, in the same line of work, within a 5 mile radius of each other. Presumably, at the time, the various Jameses were known as James/Jimmy/Jamie/Big Jim/Little Jim but on the official records they're just a confusing knot of James. I'm never 100% I've got the right one.

It's this tantalising gap between the dry facts of records and the breathing human detail that I love/hate about family trees.

I did ours in the early 2000, all on my Dad's side as Mum was Scots and it had already been done as they were very lowly descendants of the House of Usher.

I found it fascinating, especially as I found out the family were Jewish, and my Great Grandfather denied it when he joined the Army in 1900, putting down CofE.

My Dad always thought that his Grandad was an only child as he had never met any aunts or uncles. It turned out that he was one of ten, and had been disowned because of his decision.

From that I got my Dad, who had lived a very travelled life with the RAF, to write his life down. There was lots I didn't know and I wrote it up and we self published it.

My DGD who is history mad, has just read it and been enthralled in it.

I am now writing my very boring life down for her. At least I think it's boring, she and her descendants may well find it interesting.

I think it’s fascinating! I want to do more having acquired what my father put together, just need more spare time. Even if I didn’t I wouldn’t be so rude to you. I would also like to do a house history, as I live in quite an old house.

This can be both fascinating and immensely time-consuming - depends how old the house is! If you are lucky, there will be references not only in the census but in local deeds, wills, things such as the hearth tax, etc. My Dad and I have done some of this for my parents' house, and there is only one century left where we don't know who was living there or what they were doing. (15th century)

It’s the kind of thing that’s interesting to the person researching their family tree but dull to most everyone else. I don’t care who is a quarter this and a quarter that.

As you can probably tell, I never watch Who Do You Think You Are? 🤣

Having listened to my (lovely) friend recount in tedious detail the completely unremarkable results of her research, I suspect they were just trying to head you off before you started.