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Finding a Focus
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 6, First Published: May 2004Watch little children ‘reading’ books. They don’t know words, but they know that print means something, so they remember and recite (with pointing finger) so accurately that if you try to deviate they tell you ‘NO!’
They’ll ‘read’ the same book over and over, and never ‘finish’ it.
They love it because they know it, and they know it because they love it.
We should ‘become as little children’ in our research.
You may say:
"How can we focus while coping with the devious/lateral/wandering/inconsiderate/thoughtless and thoroughly irritating ways of our ancestors?"
Here are some methods:
THE TRAWL
This is a focus on one or two family names. I used it at first when I didn’t have a clue apart from vague ‘folklore’ legends and a couple of names. I had no way of knowing which entries to select so it was sensible to copy everything and stockpile lists to mull over, sort into family groups, identify, mull over again, and eventually make joyous links.
There is a definite place for the trawl, as an excellent foundation for families. I recommend it.
Also, if you happen to specially visit a record office you’re not likely to go to again, the trawl is a sensible approach.
Unfortunately it sometimes becomes an end in itself, and extends into a permanent net for ‘One Name Focus’. I’m not a ‘one namer’ myself because I’m family orientated. I think of my research as my Personal Ancestral File where no one is an island.
I always look to forge links and bring families together forever, so after trawling I’d always sort and select my catch.
If you want family groups, I encourage you to do the same. Which brings me to:
SINGLE FAMILY FOCUS:
One of the disadvantages of the ‘trawl’ is time spent collecting data you may never use.
Once identity is established there is a case for recording data for one family no matter what else you see on the way.
This gave me terrible withdrawal symptoms at first, but trust me in this.
Don’t you revisit records all the time? When Mary BROWN gets married, back you go for her children. I once had a family of eight marriageable girls, and I could have recited the parish records by heart at the end of the saga!
Maybe you think it best to find all the marriages first, but that’s just another trawl.
Single family focus means what it says. ONE FAMILY AT A TIME.
The advantage of this way can be almost spiritual. Let me explain:
I was taking a fifth look through some baptisms when I passed well known names, and a new feeling came over me that I can’t really explain, but I’m sure it was the feeling of a child opening a beloved familiar book. It was a confidence of knowing what I was doing, where I was going, and with pointing finger accurately ‘tell the story’. It was the day when love of the past became rooted in my heart, and I finally understood the meaning of ‘Family Tree’.
It was as though my ‘tree’ had put out roots and branches in hidden parts of the forest. I knew they were there needing to be found and grafted in as part of my identity.
I became a person who understood that identity is more than a passport/driving licence/list of names, but something that’s defined by roots.
Just as a tree is more than its component parts so are we more than lists of names. We’re families spread throughout the world as a tree reaches for the sky.
Some Durham records I’ve looked at twenty times and more, the most recent just last week when I found two illegitimate children baptised on the same day right next to another family member I’d found four years before. There is value in repetition. Children know it and we should remember it.
Which brings me to:
SINGLE PERSON FOCUS:
Finding everything about one person before moving on is a rarely used method, but I recommend it for difficult ancestors you’ve come to hate and need to learn to love.
You know the kind I mean: baptised nowhere/married don’t know/never there on census night/children? Who knows? The rewards are what I call Very Personal Ancestral File. You can’t comprehend it till you’ve tried it. Just multiply everything you could imagine, and you’ll have an inkling of what’s in store.
I’m working on one at the moment that I feel could be mine.
Baptised 21 July 1861 Isabella. Then the vicar has written ‘No one would say who were the parents’.
I’ll be looking into this, and given time I’ll prove/disprove it by being single minded and looking until I see.
I breathe regularly, and I’m still not bored with the activity. I just keep doing it again and again. I glory in it!
In the harvest of life gardeners hoe/weed/dig/prune/cultivate/irrigate, and they do it every year so they can sample the fruit.
Have you found out yet that the fruits of frequently focused personal ancestral research are delicious to the taste?
Repetition is the genealogist’s gem. Make it shine!
