VIRGINIA BEACH — I have an addiction. Some call it a hobby. I prefer to call it research.
I’m a genealogist.
You know, family tree stuff. Exploring your roots. Figuring out if your heritage is Irish, Scottish, Italian or all of the above.
But unlike the kid in the movie The Sixth Sense I don’t see dead people.
I chase them.
Not literally, of course, but through time.
It’s great, rewarding fun.
And there has never been an easier time to start your own time travel journey into the past.
There was no such thing as internet research when I started investigating my own family tree.
I interviewed as many relatives as I could to gather facts about our family. From there, I started writing letters to distant places in hopes that an understanding town clerk would take the time to share what they knew about a relative’s date of birth or the name of their spouse.
It sometimes was tedious work, to be sure, but it also was exhilarating when a letter arrived with a piece of information I had been looking for.
The process took months – sometimes even years – before I was able to document names and birth places of grandparents, great-grandparents and great great-grandparents.
I was satisfied with the 60 or so ancestors in my family tree, so I set my work aside and forgot about it for years. That all changed when my daughter was born. I once again set out to give her this gift of history, a more complete story about how she came to be.
I reviewed my initial work and happily discovered the internet now provides me with the ability to conduct much of my research online. Now, there are websites which allow me to organize my tree and even provide hints or leads on possible ancestors based upon the thousands upon thousands of online files and records.
I also am fortunate my wife has an uncle who had researched the family tree for her side of our family. He was happy to share his research, and I added all his information to my existing tree to make a new, more robust tree with my daughter at its root.
How many ancestors could I add?
How far back in time could I go?
I started researching again.
And I’m still looking.
It’s an ongoing process and, if one chooses, there really is no end point. I spend perhaps a couple of hours on it per week – just enough to satisfy my addiction.
Our family tree now has over 1,200 ancestors with some branches going back into the 16th century.
There have been several great discoveries along the way.
I came upon information about how one ancestral family came to the U.S. to escape the Irish potato famine.
One distant uncle, while at the U.S. Military Academy, was court-martialed for playing the trumpet in the academy band in a drunken and unprofessional manner.
But my favorite story is about the time several townspeople were arrested and jailed for wagering on a bare knuckles illegal boxing match.
After the arrests, the town sheriff went to awaken the judge – one of my great great-grand uncles – to process the wrong doers.
But the judge wasn’t home.
After much searching, he was found to be in the jail among those arrested.
The names and dates in any family tree are important, but the stories tell me more about who they were and, in a way, who we are.
There aren’t many more rewarding gifts you can give yourself – or your children – than taking a dive into your genealogy.
The author, a business coach and consultant, is active in community service and enjoys time with his wife, Kim, and daughter, Kara. Reach him via email at mckco85@aol.com.
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