I don’t really understand why some people cannot enjoy genealogy, but I know those people exist. I guess maybe it’s a little like Santa Claus, you just have to believe. You have to believe that the answers are out there, and, further, you have to believe the answers matter. I KNOW they matter to me, and boy do I believe!
I love genealogy; I love the mystery, I love the discoveries, I love figuring out how the knowledge fits into my everyday life. I have used genealogy to help me accept the pain implicit in being a human being. I have used it to expand on the joys of parent, and now grandparent-hood. I use it to console myself at the thought that I will not be here to know many generations of my own descendants: because it has helped me to feel I now know my antecedents; better at least, if not in person. Someday my great-great-grandchildren will only know of me the bits and pieces that can be found then. But I feel a real attachment to the grandmothers I never knew because of the family history research I have done, and I hope my future family will make the same claim.
I can imagine the struggles my immigrant ancestors faced as they tried to understand and fit into an alien and sometimes unwelcoming world. When I watch the news and get frustrated at the lack of progress shown by the racial struggles of late; it helps to know that people in my past have overcome ethnic hate and helped to create a better world, as I have also tried to do in my lifetime.
I truly believe that by learning about the past we can help create a better future. It is why we are taught history in school, and why my personal history has become so important to me. It helps me feel not quite so hopeless in a world of which the media is all too quick to show us the ugly side.
The world is getting better, and for many, genealogy is helping that happen, whether we think of it in those terms or not. I usually do not.
But as a new year approaches and life places so many demands on my time, it is important to evaluate how I spend that time. Is family history a pointless, frivolous and potentially expensive waste of time? I think in the “grand scheme of things,” as my Irish mother used to say, it is not. And in the millions of little ways it has brought joy into my life, it has rightfully earned a place in the small scheme of things as well. I like it, I find it fun, and in a very real sense, it has helped me a great deal. I am a better organizer, a more caring person, and I even give more thought to things like my place in a better world.
Can anyone ask more from a “hobby”?
Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft is a longtime genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. Reader emails are welcome at ninabrawn@gmail.com. Her semimonthly column is sponsored by the Aroostook County Genealogical Society which meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center at 6:30 p.m. Guests are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
