The Thrill of the Chase

The Widow's Granddaughter

Yesterday I had tea with a very dear friend who is a writer. She told me she'd enjoyed reading my two previous posts. "I enjoyed writing them," I replied, "but now I have blogblock."
"I'd like to hear about what motivates you to do genealogy," she said, and with that prompt, the block began to dissolve.

Doing genealogy is about satisfying one's curiosity. When I began doing genealogy, it was for the obvious purpose of finding who my ancestors were, and, by default, finding out about myself. As often happens with most people in the early stages of doing genealogy, I collected names in straight lines, along with the vital dates that define each life.



Those dates provide a context for an ancestor's life; things happened around and to each person because of the time and place in which the person lived. A great-great grandfather who turned 18 in 1864 quite possibly went off to war with all the brashness and confidence of youth; a great-great-great grandmother, widowed with four children, and who worked in a Nottingham lace factory, probably led a rather grim life. Context fuels speculation and speculation fuels curiosity and curiosity demands to be satisfied.

Wade Hampton McLean

Genealogy is so much more than drawing a straight line from one generation to another. I do genealogy to satisfy my curiosity about the individuals in my "line", about the family surrounding them, and about the events that shaped their lives. Genealogy is the Great Chase: it's a hunting expedition, careful detective work, and the game of Tag all rolled into one. It involves tracking down those facts that can be found, but more often than not, making educated guesses based on experience, knowledge, and imagination. Sometimes it involves a bit of pyschoanalysis (of the ancestor, not the descendant!). I love trying to "figure them out," because, as I said in my previous blog, it's all about making them come alive.

And that is my sole/soul motivation for doing genealogy.


By the way, the young man who went off to war probably had his confidence a good deal shaken at the ferocious Battle of Atlanta, and by participating in Sherman's infamous March to the Sea; he never joined a veterans' group, and he named his youngest son after a Confederate general. The widow and her children moved to Philadelphia, and judging from the tasteful granite family monument in Mt. Moriah Cemetery, had a much-improved life.