Why I Do Genealogy
I just read this blog post by Jessica Oswalt on the Jessica’s GeneJournal blog and it got me thinking:
My husband asks me every so often why I do genealogy and frankly I’ve never had a good answer for him.
“I just love it,” I say. “I can’t explain why.”
Well, maybe now I can explain it. In college I had the best history teacher, Dr. George Vourlojanis. He made it come alive for me and I almost switched my major because of him.
I had never cared about history before I took his class. It was boring. Just a bunch of names and dates. But Dr. Vourlojanis had us do a project dealing with the Great Depression. We had to interview someone who lived through the years of the depression and find out about their life during that time. It didn’t have to be a relative, but I chose to interview my grandparents. What a gold mine that turned out to be. Genealogically and historically. Not only did I learn what it was like for them in that time, but I found out more about the Roosevelts, the New Deal, the WPA, the CCC, etc. than any history text book will teach you. It was info about how the people viewed these people/events/ideas/projects. It was all put into context and it was fascinating.
I wont lie, I always get a thrill just adding a new name to my family tree, without knowing anything else about the person, but I now realize that my main reason for doing genealogy is to find out about my family in the context of history. The more I learn about the time period they lived in and what they dealt with makes their lives more meaningful to me. And the more I learn about my family’s genealogy the more meaningful history becomes as well.
[...] Why I Do Genealogy By Amanda I wont lie, I always get a thrill just adding a new name to my family tree, without knowing anything else about the person, but I now realize that my main reason for doing genealogy is to find out about my family in the context of … Random Ramblings – http://colubridlady.com [...]
July 1st, 2008 at 9:10 amGreetings:
New reader here. I agree. I find myself getting so thrilled when I can add another name to my family tree, and learning about the place and time they were living adds even more excitement for me. I think often times in school we learn about history and that in learning about history, many times what we learn is broad. But learning about families shows that everyone’s experiences during a time period were unique, and at the same time, our loved ones weren’t so different from us. They had crushes, hobbies, concerns, issues just as we do. That’s a reason why I like genealogy. : )
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July 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pmGenealogy is an amazing hobby. I love history and how people survived with out the technology we have today, and the depression was crazy. The fact that we even exist today because they survived is… wow. I used to like listening to my grandpa talk about WWII and how he was a currier for the army, he was an Eagle Scout so didn’t have to be on the front lines. I just wish that my kids could have listened to him, and learn from his knowledge. I read another blog about life videos, he has been doing videos of people talking about their lives for around 20 years. I encourage anyone to check it out, http://www.life-history-videos.com. If I would have heard about this 10 years ago I would have looked into it further.
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July 2nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm