CathP
New Member
Hi all, I was invited to the forum some time ago but today, decided I should actually check it out properly. I began FH seriously in 1995 when my oldest two children had to do a family tree for their Social Science class. I was also keen to find out where each of my and my husband's ancestors had come from so that when we retired we could visit these places and walk where they had trod. I have since visited a couple of these places.
I knew our parents', grandparents' and some great grandparents' names but not a lot past that. I visited the local Mormon FHC and checked out the microfiche and after the first visit had discovered lots of my mother-in-law's Tasmanian ancestors. I thought "How easy is this"? I obviously had a lot to learn! In the intervening 24 years, I added to my focus, finding out as many of our direct ancestors as I could and then following the lines "down" as far as I could to the present day. Both of our fathers' fathers' families came from Catholic Ireland and that has meant I cannot get past the first half of the 19th century, but we also have ancestors who came from England, Scotland and Germany. There are also many cousins from all over the world. I now have more than 20,000 in my family tree program (which happens to be Brother's Keeper), all entered by me - they are our relations and personal to us. After about 15 years my mother asked what was the good of collecting names? She wanted to know about their lives, so I have been writing up about various families. Two years ago I finished a "book" (450+pages on Word) on my mother's mother's father's father's family who hailed from Scotland. I made contact with various 2nd and 3rd cousins and now send the latest copy via a site called Wetransfer as a Christmas present each year, always in the hope that they will send me something new back. I did the couple who came out, their immediate families, then their children and grandchildren. I stopped there as the next generation had people who are still alive and I thought that would produce a can of worms. Being in Australia, I found out an incredible amount from the Trove Newspaper site, but I included as much anecdotal evidence as I could, for me (and others) to prove or disprove. They were the voices of earlier family and it is that which will be lost, not the records. Now I am doing a similar one for my husband's paternal grandfather's family.
My 3 surviving children are not really interested - but I tell them they don't have to be interested, they just have to preserve my work. If they don't, I have threatened to haunt them!
I knew our parents', grandparents' and some great grandparents' names but not a lot past that. I visited the local Mormon FHC and checked out the microfiche and after the first visit had discovered lots of my mother-in-law's Tasmanian ancestors. I thought "How easy is this"? I obviously had a lot to learn! In the intervening 24 years, I added to my focus, finding out as many of our direct ancestors as I could and then following the lines "down" as far as I could to the present day. Both of our fathers' fathers' families came from Catholic Ireland and that has meant I cannot get past the first half of the 19th century, but we also have ancestors who came from England, Scotland and Germany. There are also many cousins from all over the world. I now have more than 20,000 in my family tree program (which happens to be Brother's Keeper), all entered by me - they are our relations and personal to us. After about 15 years my mother asked what was the good of collecting names? She wanted to know about their lives, so I have been writing up about various families. Two years ago I finished a "book" (450+pages on Word) on my mother's mother's father's father's family who hailed from Scotland. I made contact with various 2nd and 3rd cousins and now send the latest copy via a site called Wetransfer as a Christmas present each year, always in the hope that they will send me something new back. I did the couple who came out, their immediate families, then their children and grandchildren. I stopped there as the next generation had people who are still alive and I thought that would produce a can of worms. Being in Australia, I found out an incredible amount from the Trove Newspaper site, but I included as much anecdotal evidence as I could, for me (and others) to prove or disprove. They were the voices of earlier family and it is that which will be lost, not the records. Now I am doing a similar one for my husband's paternal grandfather's family.
My 3 surviving children are not really interested - but I tell them they don't have to be interested, they just have to preserve my work. If they don't, I have threatened to haunt them!
