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Tackling Difficult River Paths
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 9, First Published: July 2004My husband was apprenticed as an electrician in the Tyne shipyards from the age of fifteen to twenty one, in the days when people got jobs through relatives already working. His Uncle Billy ‘spoke for him’ and he was ‘taken on’, working a further 33 years until the shipyards closed in the middle 90’s.
Once he mentioned he’d actually wanted to be a joiner but they weren’t ‘taking on’ when he started work.
I asked him why he hadn’t become a joiner later on, and he said he had been brought up to give things a fair chance!
THIS IS TENACITY AT ITS BEST.
He then worked as a maintenance electrician in a foundry, which was a filthy and dangerous job he hated, but he stayed for six years until something better came along.
THIS IS THE WORK ETHIC.
Put tenacity and the work ethic on your list of ‘bedrock watchwords’ for research success.
An old rhyme says:
Stick to your task till it sticks to you,
Beginners are many but enders are few.
Honour, power, place and praise
Will always come to the one who stays.
Stick to your task till it sticks to you,
Bend at it stretch at it smile at it too,
For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile,
Will come life’s victories after a while.
We have ancestors who never thought about being ancestors. They just thought about daily life, so we inherited research problems to bend, stretch, and smile at.
Have you experienced a point in research where life’s victory finally comes? It’s an experience to be highly recommended, because it encompasses what can only be called ‘family power’, and it’s exhilarating!
There’s a feeling comes on me when I’m about to make a ‘find’, whether it’s personal or professional. Sometimes my heart beats faster, while my mouth goes dry, and I’m not alone in this. I’ve been grabbed by people who’ve ‘made a find’, and I’ve done a fair bit of grabbing myself! And the beauty of it is, no one considers it odd. Everyone shares in the joy, and they act as if something stupendous has just happened. They come to look at the microfilm entry, and much mutual gloating ensues. Then they talk about their own experiences of searching and finding.
What is it that brings this feeling? Why does it happen? Isn’t genealogy just a hobby?
Well no, actually it’s not. Think of it as a way of life.
PROPER GENEALOGISTS LISTEN AND LEARN FROM THE EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS
When I’m researching I become immersed in that family whether the work is personal or professional. They become my family for the time of the work, and I treat them as I would my own. Nothing is too good for them. Nothing is too much effort.
GET IMMERSED. IT’S ANOTHER KEY TO SUCCESS.
And so we come to the oft forgotten activity of ‘Mooching’.
For the uninitiated, this means:
Looking casual but being focused
Making nothing into something
Observing and storing
If you haven’t mooched you haven’t lived.
I learned the advantages of mooching from my father. He was an unskilled man with tenacity and work ethic, who laboured in the shipyards, in a foundry (coming home soaked with sweat each night), then in a plastics moulding factory (getting burns all over his hands). The factory closed and he was out of work for six months, until he got a summer job in the local park taking money at the tennis courts.
When there was no one playing, he didn’t just idle away the hours. He mooched round the flower borders, and tidied them. Then he brought his own tools, and in spare moments hoed, raked and weeded.
This was noticed and he ended up with a gardening job that lasted until his retirement.
MOOCHING GETS YOU PLACES!
I always try to find a spare hour for this enjoyable and fruitful activity. My mind is full of surnames: my own, my friends’ and ones connected with my professional work, so when I’m mooching I look for them. Well informed people often ask me to keep an eye out for names because they’ve learned, as I have, the value of the mooch. Genealogy isn’t about rush and hurry. It’s about urgency and prioritising.
Wouldn’t you think that genealogy would be objective, linked as it is with statistics and records?
Genealogy is SUBJECTIVE and very personal.
In the days when genealogists were considered odd, my husband was a train spotter. Together we epitomised the zenith of eccentricity!
We linked holidays with interests, and walked old railway paths or sat in archives countrywide, even though I thought railways were like watching paint dry, and he could be a real pest in search rooms.
Once when walking the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire, we had to detour onto what was called with typical British understatement: DIFFICULT RIVER PATH.
That phrase lived in our memories, and we used it ever after to describe something horrendous, when there was no turning back, and we had to soldier on.
I’ve noticed that genealogy can be a DIFFICULT RIVER PATH, but we’re here to acquire the qualities to see us through, because:
Successful genealogists defeat difficult river paths through:
TENCITY: Staying and holding power in cliff hanging situations
WORK ETHIC: A huge capacity for labouring and not asking for any reward
LISTENING AND LEARNING: Stockpile knowledge from reliable sources
IMMERSION: The gift of total involvement
MOOCHING: The power to be calmly busy, incisively sharp, and quietly useful
Watching your past family emerge from obscurity is like seeing water pour for the first time from a new well. It quenches your thirst for togetherness.
