Tips from genealogy magazines

 

                                                         Some of the many genealogy magazines I have collected

I have started to go through my stash, or should I say stashes, of genealogy magazines. There are a lot of them, many not even read. In the past, when I made an attempt to keep up with perusing the articles, I tagged the pages I wanted to get back to. Those were the pages with links to websites or other information of interest. It is only now when I look at the date of some of those publications that I worry that many of those links are out of date. Oh well, that's one way of seeing what stood the test of time.

Your Genealogy, March/April 2016, in an article on Scottish Research, mentioned two prime research sites, Genuki, which I knew about, and A Vision of Britain Through Time which rang a faint bell. I tested that site out by looking up Horkstow, Lincolnshire, where I knew my earliest known British ancestor had been born, but that probably wasn't the wisest choice, since the history on the site only goes back to 1801. However, it does offer links to other sites as well as information about historical places and writing.

The article was just one of many that I've tagged in my piles of genealogy magazines. I'm hoping to get through the stack of publications that I've already read before tackling all the other magazines that have piled up over the years. The "already read" heap is pretty daunting itself but I just have to remind myself that there could be treasurers in there to discover. 

Researching an ancestor's character

                                       Some of the books that may give me clues to my ancestors' characters

As a storyteller, I like to convey the personality of my characters whether they are fictional or are people who actually lived. With real people that can be easier if we have actually met the person, although any impression gathered may have been coloured by circumstance and our relative status at the time. Trying to understand historic figures can be trickier.

Some of their personality can be gathered through their actions, but it must be remembered that those actions happened at a different time. Society then had different rules, written and unwritten. There were also different social supports in place or, in some cases, lacking. So actions were constrained by circumstances that need to be explored if we are to have any hope of understanding them.

A chance remark at a recent online meeting put me on the path of another clue. It was an observation about the presenter's own behaviour being typical for a middle child. Could birth order hold some clues for understanding our ancestors? So many families in earlier times seemed to be big and messy with many more children and often featured changing partners for the parent couple if one of those parent ancestors was long lived. I have a few families in my own ancestral background in mind while I ponder this. I've also plucked a book about birth order from my shelves to see if I can find any potential for using the idea of birth order to explore ancestors' characters further. Let's see if The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why by Dalton Conley can offer me insights into my ancestors and their families. 

Time to explore my genealogy collection

 

                                  Copies of documents I forgot about recently found among my genealogy records

I'm currently following along with the DNA Study Group presented by Your DNA Guide. One of the prompts that Diahan Southard says after we have finished processing our DNA matches is to ask yourself "What have I gathered?" Really, that question can probably be used outside the DNA context. I know I have a bad habit of hunting for information while researching, obtaining the treasured data, gathering it and then storing it away somewhere. I fall down at the stage of putting it into use.

It's the same thing with books. My personal library is filled with tomes on my subjects of interest. A lot of them are histories of places that my family have lived and they have lived in a lot of different places. There are other pet topics as well, such as genetic genealogy, medicine and diseases, transportation and books about Jack the Ripper - I have a weakness for murder mysteries, and besides, my family lived in the East End of London where Jack hunted.

The time has come to actually find what I have gathered. Part of that happens as I delve into various sources to bring to life a story of family so writing various articles and this blog are part of the process. The project of broadening my family tree also helps. I've run across things I didn't remember I had. Things like a family tree related to the husband of one of the McKay daughters that I found tucked into the pages of a binder along with copies of documents related to that couple, including their births and marriages. The family tree was a bonus that can take me off in another direction if I let it, but the husband's line is not directly related to mine and, before I use the information on it, it would need to be checked out. So I should probably save it to look at later. But those books on the shelves are something I need to start exploring. Maybe they hold important clues to how my ancestors lived. 

Research and a family mystery

 

                          The Bridgend Hotel on Islay where my Auntie Peg once stayed while doing research in the area

My first forays in family history research happened many years ago. It was a time before personal computers were the norm in family homes, a time so long ago there was no internet. Do you remember those days? They seem remote now as I sit writing this blog post while taking part in an online writing sprint on Zoom with the Family History Masterclass for the February Writing Challenge.

But as far away as the start of my own first steps into my family's past take me, there was someone who had gone before me, my great aunt Peg. Unfortunately, I never spoke to her about her search or anything she had found. She lived in Winnipeg and I grew up in Montreal, so we were not close. She died in the 1970s and my first halting steps on the path to researching family history happened a decade later.

Perhaps my great aunt's interest in family percolated down to other members because it was some family stories that first made me perk up my ears. It could have been the subject that caught my attention, though. That old question of whether he fell or was pushed. I was a fan of murder mysteries at an early age. I have a distinct recollection of my Gran talking to my mother about a death in the family. It was a mysterious end that I later found out had become part of Canadian mythology.

Did Auntie Peg read The Tom Thomson Mystery by William Little? It was about her first cousin once removed and it came out in the '70s while she was still alive. That book might have sparked the conversation I heard between my mother and grandmother. My grandmother was Auntie Peg's sister. It's a real boon to research an event that drew public attention because family details make their way into the account. It's like newspaper research on steroids.

But, as much potential as those sources have, I would still like to be able to see what my Auntie Peg had found during her researches. I know that she went as far as travelling to the places that our ancestors hailed from as I have evidence that she travelled to Islay, where our Gilchrist clan came from. I'm sure that if she had known of my interest, she would have passed on the results of her research. As I've gotten older, I know it would ease my mind knowing there was someone I could leave my research to. Who to leave our research to is a common topic in my genealogy society at the moment and many of us wish we could pass it along to an interested person in a younger generation.