I was here

After a few years of neglect, I’ve gone back to doing my family history research.  It costs a fortune (few data resources are free these days, sigh) and takes up inordinate amounts of time. Now I’ve got a gedcom file (afficiandos will understand) that comprises 1242 individuals, all related to me in some way.  My direct ancestors (all those Great Grandparents to the power of n) amount to 104 people, stretching back into the 1600s.  Their blood (and genes) runs in my veins.  Almost without exception, they were dirt poor and undistinguished.  Their lives must have been harder than I can even imagine.  They’d be disdainful of the soft life I lead.  Some of the women are especially interesting – brave, tough women who brought up housefuls of children without a man, or bore a child while rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

In the midst of all this data-gathering and detective work (that’s why it’s fascinating, of course, it’s your very own detective story and you have to pick up clues where you are and piece them together if you can) I sometimes stop to think why I’m doing it.  I know that it’s important enough to me that I’m thinking of putting it into my will.  I know that the doing of it makes me feel connected to family, even if they don’t know I exist, or they’re long dead.

Above all,  this research, all this mass of Cowan and Higgins and Somerville and Benson (and all the other associated names) proves something.  It proves that I existed, I lived. It proves that I was here.   A small life such as mine is often an unshared, unwitnessed life. Most of my ancestors led small lives, leaving only the faintest dent in history.  It’s fitting that I, who will leave only the smallest of impressions on the world, am the recorder of all those lives.

Footnote This post first appeared in curlsdiva.com on April 13, 2009, before folkarethething.com existed. I’m transferring all genealogically related posts from that blog to this.