With this first post I recommit to bringing order to my thinking and writing. I have previously written on matters of theater, design, and higher education, but for a couple decades I have been engaged also in researching and documenting the history of my and my wife's family history. It has been intermittent and the intensity varied over the years, as the demands of the present have pressed.
I have enjoyed reading "blogs" by other genealogists over the last decade. I refuse to call myself a genealogist or characterize what I do as genealogy, though it may be. My own research projects have their own shape, but we rise from the same pond.
The appeal of family history research for me is the personal connection to the past. In grade school we learn about our history as a nation, but it all takes on so much greater significance when we can name our ancestor living through those events. We become vicarious visitors to the past, straining to see through their eyes, understanding their circumstances and their choices. We wonder what part of their spirit we carry.
In my case I have several Colonial lines from my mother, and a 20th Century immigrant family on my father's side. Cousins and past family historians have tracked down much of the outline, though some detail remains to be filled in. My particular interests lie in observing how those ancestors interacted with their times and what the texture of their lives was like. I like to know them by their choices.
All of my ancestors moved away from their home communities, or state, or even country, almost every single generation. Clearly they were seekers, and in that sense, quintessentially American, participating in the Great Expansion. I have followed their lead.
1810 Midwest
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