My Family History
For the last 5 years I have been researching my family history.
I have no expectation of finding anything earth shattering, nothing that will change my life but I do want to find out about the people that lived before me and who helped form the life that I am living now. Every time I hesitate I re read the poem The Story Tellers and I remember why I am doing this.
The Story Tellers
We are the chosen. My feelings are in each family
there is one who seems called to find the ancestors.
To put flesh on their bones and make them live
again, to tell the family story and to feel that
somehow they know and approve. To me, doing
geneology is not a cold gathering of facts but,
instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.
We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have
one. We have been called as it were by our genes.
Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell
our story. So, we do.
In finding them, we somehow find ourselves.
How many graves have I stood before now and
cried? I have lost count. How many times have I
told the ancestors you have a wonderful family
you would be proud of us?
How many times have I walked up to a grave and
felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot
say.
It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to
who am I and why do I do the things I do? It
goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever
to weeds and indifference and saying I can’t let
this happen.
The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh
of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it.
It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able
to accomplish. How they contributed to what we
are today. It goes to respecting their hardships
and losses, their never giving in or giving up,
their resoluteness to go on and build a life for
their family.
It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and
keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense
understanding that they were doing it for us.
That we might be born who we are. That we might
remember them. So we do. With love and caring
and scribing each fact of their existence, because
we are them and they are us. So, as a scribe called,
I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one
called in the next generation to answer the call
and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.
That, is why I do my family geneology, and that
is what calls those young and old to step up and
put flesh on the bones.
Unknown Author
I have taken this version from Ancestry Freepages but I have come across it many times with slightly different words.
I am haunted by something I read last year about the people who have researched in the past. According to the article, women ‘of a certain age’ write their family tree using their immediate family knowledge and the family stories passed down to them. The article stated that these histories had been written on paper and on the death of the woman in question were often thrown out in house clearance when their importance wasn’t recognised. These days with computers and all the genealogy sites this should never happen again but it has made me realise the importance of writing down the stories that I learn.
I try to write the narrative of each family unit, partly to understand more and partly to ennable me to see where I have made mistakes or missed things out. I plan to put these narratives in my blog, they will not contain all the facts and figures which I keep in many files on my computer, but hopefully will communicate a bit of the lives of my family.
