Genealogy Chat

Janet I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. Let me loose for just five minutes on my family from the Northants villages and Ireland and I will 'bore' the pants off anybody who is only interested in the thousands they have on their trees! Much more fun to carry them round in your head, and to muse how like Great Uncle Bloggs I am when I write about that particular ancestor. I will take a degree in all my interesting ancestors any day and would hope to get at least First Class Hons!! Janet

No, not yet, John, but when we do, I shall pass with a first class honours degree! OC

So have we found a university that awards degrees in boringness? J

Janet I too carry my family round in my head! I can bore for England on the subject of the Greens of Gawsworth, with whom I feel a great affinity (because they were so easy to find!) I also know a LOT about the Holdens of Lancashire and can trot out names and dates, right back to 1179, and have been known to show a casual caller a copy of the rental agreement for the Manors of Holden and Simonstone, which was one red rose and one flete (arrowhead) payable on the feast of St Agnes. That's 1345, in case you wanted to know. OC

I work with databases every day in my job and I find I'm always scanning them for familiar names and places and wondering......Oooh, could he be a relative. I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm at work and not looking for links to the past.

Thankyou all for your replies. After nearly 20 years of ferreting around, I feel such an affinity with the main branches, although I must admit to needing my notes to keep tabs on some of the twigs and leaves! My partner claims I am more animated about what he calls my 'dead people' than I am about some of the living. He's probably right!! Jay

I've got both; quite a lot is in my head but I don't have room for it all now! I know an enormous amount of stuff about several of my direct ancestors, the stuff that makes them real - but I also have all their siblings & children, just in case someone contacts me about them. Then we can swap notes & I might find something else to add. Tom shares an ancestor with my OH, this chap is mentioned in the 1842 mining report. I can almost see him, hearing the words he spoke when he was interviewed about being a miner. That's the sort of detail that brings them back to life. I have seen a true family historian defined as someone who can talk about their ancestors lives in detail for 5 minutes.

I know what you mean in a fashion, i am still trying to work out things about where people worked etc, but if i hear a place name i am like oh so and so used to live there. Hubby has about had enough of my outbursts of this and i think will soon be buying a gag for me. I think it is lovely to know why you are here and the way you are as they have all contributed to it. Jen

I focus mainly on direct ancestors, who have all 'contributed' to me being here - however, as I have a couple of uncommon names in my tree I have had to try and group families together to see how they link to mine. I do however agree that you should know about them as people, my family think I'm mad when I say something like '175 years ago today..' or that I know most of the birth, marriage and death dates of my ancestors, hey ho!

I know what you are saying Janet but that depends on how good your memory is. I would forget almost any date within 5 minutes! I am training myself to remember all the surnames, you never know when & where you might find a link.

Is there anyone else, like me, who really only feels comfortable having families they “can carry around in their head”? I’m not after several thousands of people on a paper tree. Basically, I’ve researched 3 extended families (the 4th grandparent was Irish) and picked up some female lines along the way. I feel I know them well, so that when a place name crops up, I know if and when my rellies lived or worked there and what the place was like in their lifetime. If someone mentions Fred Bloggs, I can say oh he was my gt-grandma’s uncle and he was actually married twice; his son Bill married Lucy Jones and they lived at xxxx; he had a daughter called Mary – now she was a bit of a lass! When I go to a record office or a library, I like being able to guess where new references might fit into the bigger picture; when someone contacts me, I like to feel that I already have some inkling of how they’re going to connect. Obviously I DO have paper records (files of them!) and do still get surprises. BUT these people are my ancestors – they made me what I am today. I wouldn’t be without them and I like them in my head, everywhere I go. Jay

Quantity or quality? Which is your comfort zone, or do you go for both? (see below)