Roots

I've been doing some casual genealogy work lately.  This is an interest of mine that I've dabbled in from time to time over the past decade or two.  My efforts tend to be cyclical.  I'll start enthusiastically, soaking up every tidbit I can find on the internet.  Soon enough, though, the sheer amount of potential data to mine overwhelms me.  Each generation back has twice as many ancestors to search.  The software geek in me wiles away hours trying to devise the most efficient method for storing, searching and presenting the information.  The joy of the hunt fades.  I save away what I have and I do something else for awhile.

Until recently, my work has mostly focused on my father's side of the family.  This was greatly due to the fact that my aunt has a wealth of information.  My "work" was mostly copying her notes and tagging myself to the bottom of the tree.  The information was fairly straight-forward.  My ancestors came to America from Norway and Sweden in the mid-1800s and settled in the Midwest.  Whatever happened in Scandinavia, for the most part, was a mystery.  I have the name of a town or two, here and there, but searching records in a foreign country goes beyond the level of effort I'm willing to put forth right now.

My last bout of research has focused on my mother's side.  Again, much of the fundamental information I have was provided by relatives who did the real work or saved the right documents.  My initial research on my maternal grandfather's family yielded results similar to what I had found on my father's side.  Europeans, this time from northern Germany, coming to America in the 1800s and settling on farms.  I knew the pattern.  Everything fit nicely with the charts from my father's side, with the ancestors going back a similar number of generations.

Then I started following my maternal grandmother's lineage.  These people were primarily English and Irish and they were apparently in America much longer than my other ancestors.  In my searching, I stumbled across another person's research containing all the names and dates I was looking for - apparently, a distant relative of mine.  This person's research traces back to the 1600s and the first colonies in Massachusetts.  I don't know for a fact that all of the data is correct but the parts I could verify were accurate.  For now, I'm choosing to believe it.  I rather like thinking of myself as a descendant of these people.

I've always regarded the pilgrims and colonists and even the revolution as things and events that were American history but not specifically my history.  Now, the chance to lay claim to it is tantalizing.  Still, there is also a chance that I'll uncover something that refutes the entire link.  Maybe it's time to do something else for awhile.