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Bravely Into the Unknown
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 36, First Published: March 2006My husband hated shopping of any description, but he stoically endured it as a necessary evil to obtain food and clothing.
He never bought me gifts for Christmas or birthdays, but gave me money to buy my own, or should I say, he would casually mention in passing that it was the appropriate time of year for me to ‘raid’ our joint bank account.
I endured this because in all other ways he was so excellent!
However, one year I made a stand, and despite his protests insisted he go out and personally purchase something for my Christmas. I gave him my sizes (About which he was clueless!) and a massive list of suggestions.
He stood lingering at the door, silently pleading and hoping I would relent, but I just stared at him, equally silent, and more determined by the minute.
Finally, seeing my heart was stone, he slowly, ever so slowly, fastened his coat button by agonising button, looked me in the eye and said very quietly:
"All right I’ll go, but don’t blame me if I come back crying!"
He squared his shoulders and stepped forward bravely into the unknown.
Well, he didn’t come back crying, and I still have the jacket he bought that memorable day. I didn’t push my luck and ask him to repeat the exercise the following year!
Tackling our family research for the first time is stepping forward bravely into the unknown.
We know we should do it. We want to do it, but we’ve never done it before.
If we’re like the great majority of family history enthusiasts, we’re older, and may think we can’t learn new tricks.
We:
• See massive family trees people have produced and feel we’ll never match them.
• Listen to genealogy jargon and haven’t a clue
• Don’t know how to access resources
• Go around in circles
• Are computer illiterate
REMEMBER THESE THINGS:
• Think of yourself as a moment in history
• No moment in history is isolated
• All history has a context
• Surround yourself with the facts that give your life context, and move on from there.
Start with a simple statement like mine. This is my context:
I am from a working class upbringing in a shipbuilding/coal-mining town on the north East Coast of England.
We lived in two rooms and a kitchen (no bathroom). Our father laboured in unskilled occupations all his life and came home dirty and tired, and our mother looked after our home, washing by hand for a family of five with water heated in buckets on the stove.
Every time I see the word ‘Labourer’ as the occupation on a document, I think of my father who was a labourer and only a Dad, but the best of men.
Each time I work on a new family line I give it context in the same way. When I was first researching my parents, their context was:
Marjorie was born in South Shields on 17 September 1921, the only child of her parents.
Early in 1940 she went to feed the ducks at the local park, and an off duty Scottish soldier named Charlie spoke to her.
He walked her home that day, and on 5 July 1941 they were married in the ancient parish church of St Hilda in South Shields market place.
Their wedding cake had no icing because no one had the ration coupons to buy the sugar.
Charlie was then sent to the Middle East where he fought as a Desert Rat at Tobruk and El Alamein, and they didn’t meet again for almost five years.
I am sometimes asked the question: ‘How far back are you in your research?’
I’m not interested in ‘How far back?’
I’m interested in ‘How many people?’
Each of the family members I’ve researched has a context in my scheme of things, and from a simple start I now have family information for thousands of people.
I stepped forward bravely into the unknown to find them, and they each have their unique place of honour in my research memory.
And even now, when I no longer step forward bravely into the unknown, but have the knowledge and confidence to systematically break down barriers or leave problems to stew for a while, nothing has changed.
The name of the game is people in the context of their lives and history.
You’re one of them, so give yourself solid context and a technicolour background.
Frame yourself into the picture, and expand it until you’re part of a massive family portrait stretching back through the centuries.
LABOUR to learn about your ancestors
STRIVE to give them a context for their lives
THINK more about personalities than numbers
PAUSE to be glad that you have a task many will never experience.
