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Musings for Friday - History via Genealogy [1]

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Date: 2023-01-13

One never knows what or who you may find in your family tree. You need to go wide. The further back you go, the wider the tree. Look closely, there are lessons to be learned.

Some of you may know that I’ve been doing research into my family tree. The research goes in spurts, just like my brain does. There’s no timeline imposed to hurry things along. In the beginning I took the shortcuts available only to find out they were rife with errors. Correcting those errors took three or four times the work of taking my time and doing it with deliberation.



What’s become interesting is the history you learn. Some of my branches extend more than 20 generations. Theoretically, that’s 638,976 pairs of 20th Great great grandparents. I say theoretically because what you will find is several of your branches have crossed one another. (For example my fraternal grandmother is something like a 6th cousin once or twice removed on my mother’s side. (I’m speculating because it would take me half a day to lock it down exactly.) Why do they cross? Proximity. Even proximity may vary depending on whether we’re talking about city versus rural, rich versus poor, etc.

Seeing your family through historical eyes isn’t always an easy view. You see how women were treated. Some of my ancestral grandfathers and granduncles were married 3 or four times, not because they divorced, but because their wives died in childbirth or shortly after. The almost casualness is stark from today’s position. I have slave-owners in my family, some of whom go back to the very beginning of our country. Seeing one person naming another person as something to give to an heir is not what one expects, but the documents are there. (I don’t have the skill, money or other resources to follow up on those names. Paging Dr. Gates.)

Genealogy will give you a new perspective on the history you’ve learned. The question is whether it broadens your view or narrows it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/13/2147024/-Musings-for-Friday-History-via-Genealogy

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