Recently, I've revisited one of my all-time favorite hobbies: studying genealogy. Genealogy is something that I've been passionate about since I was a little kid. It all started because of my grandma, whom we all affectionately knew as "Grammy." She was such a great person, and was truly one-of-a-kind.
Whenever my sister and I would go to her house when we were little, we would always ask to take out her "treasures." Kept in a drawer in the guest room, Grammy kept some of her most prized material possessions there - old pictures, letters, gold coins, and jewelry. Grammy had a way of keeping items that held sentimental value. Every birthday card, postcard, picture and letter, she kept it. I loved asking questions about all of the people in our family. She had a family book, which one of her second cousins had published and had donated to national libraries. I would sit in amazement hearing stories of my ancestors, as Grammy read from the book, and explained the lives that people lived.
Through these stories I learned so much about who I am. I am a cousin of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, members of the House of Burgesses, members of the General Assembly, North Carolina's first female lawyer and plenty of other regular people who lived their lives with their families.
In fifth grade, we had to do a project where we interviewed our parents or grandparents, and ask them questions about their past and how they grew up. I chose to interview Grammy. This was my kind of project. I asked her all kinds of questions, and presented it to my class. I got a good grade, but after years had passed, I had lost track of this tape.
While I was in middle school, I began to actually keep track of my family using family tree software. I made the tree go back as far as I could. As I got older, I tracked my family roots back to Virginia, North Carolina, Norway, Germany, England, Scotland and Wales. I loved knowing about my ancestors.
When I came to college, I kind of stopped working on my family tree. I ran into several obstacles in my search that left questions, as I couldn't find any more information. Over Christmas break, my family went down to Mississippi to stay with my sister. Her husband is in the Navy, and stationed in Gulfport. Right before I went, I found the tape, and was shocked. I had almost forgotten all about it. My family and I listened to it, and it made us laugh. It was good to hear Grammy's voice, and to remember being good at something that I really loved to do. In a way, I felt like I had abandoned something that I always liked to do. Nobody around me was really into genealogy, but I kind of liked doing something that no one else did.
It also kind of made me miss looking up our family history. So I've recently found more information on my dad's side of the family. I've never been able to go beyond my great-grandparents on his mother's side before. I was able to trace back to the 900s in France, Germany and England. I was so surprised that I hadn't seen any of this information beforehand. The more I investigated, the more I became interested.
The way I research is pretty basic. I normally Google a person's name and I may throw their state of birth in there too. I've found so much information from things as simple as an obituary. Once you find a few names, you have more people to research, and more information to look through. It doesn't take long before anybody can find out a lot about where they came from.
What I love about genealogy is that everyone has a different story. I love to think of how far people have come. It really makes you think if one thing after another hadn't fallen into place, and if that person didn't have a child, or marry that person, then maybe we wouldn't be here ourselves. Our ancestry is something that makes all of us unique. It's cool to think about where a person's roots begin. I think everyone should use all resources available to them to research where they came from. Eventually, you'll find something worthwhile.
