Question of the Week: Has researching your genealogy changed your view of yourself?

Question

Has researching your genealogy changed how you view yourself?

Tell us about it with an answer below! You could also use the question image to share your answer with friends and family on social media.

Comments

It made me understand more of how my father felt. Researching was almost a smack in the face with reality. When you are digging things up or things fall into your lap the fact that genealogy is fun yes but also isn’t a game. It’s real. Sometimes one may forget that these people are real and not just a record on the internet. It showed me that one Must be prepared to let some skeletons out of the closet and outcomes aren’t always the way you may imagine. Very emotional experience for me

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I agree completely. Once the door is opened it is impossible to close and there can definitely be some questions.  However, after doing my research I have more answers than I used to, which is good.

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It’s definitely opening Pandora’s box. I have more answers than I did. The family mystery is solved but for me it’s more of a bittersweet thing, maybe. I try to find silver linings in everything and I have them in this situation but still...

Unless one actually experiences what someone else did, you can never truly can get a sense on how someone is molded or how they feel based on uncontrollable situations they were in the middle of. I can say that after my journey with genealogy I can say that i have a better understanding on that. And you try not to wish or dwell but it’s hard. For me, taking breaks is important so not to have something turn into an obsession.

Whatever the reason to dig into your own family or someone else’s just go into it knowing it’s can be a life changing perspective and emotional thing. Set boundaries and always remember that while genealogical research is fun and interesting it’s also very real and more often than not what was in the dark will come to light.

Answer 1

Yes, it really changed my view!  I grew up in Western Canada, never in the same town as any relatives, and not having met any extended family members beyond 1 aunt,  3 uncles, 10 cousins and 2 great-aunts, some of whom i would only meet once or twice in my life.  Three of my grandparents were born in England, and in the days before email and affordable long distance calling, it was as if the families they left behind hardly existed.

It gave me a sense of not fitting in, being a little isolated and on the fringes of 'normal' people who had lived in the same town for several generations and had complex networks of connections.

This view was challenged by the work of Esther Clark Wright, who published her research on The Steeves Descendants, and my name was in there.  I saw as a teenager that i was somehow connected to these thousands of people! 

I also began to wonder if the same info existed for my other grandparents, and started asking questions.

Gradually, and especially after a family research trip to England in 1979 and then the explosion of family history resources on the internet, i came to understand that my English-born grandparents had left towns where they were literally related to almost everyone, as did my Steeves great grandfather.  

They had grown up in the connected-ness i craved, and seemingly had no problems turning their backs on it!  I was able to see it for the two-edged sword it probably is!

Nevertheless, i hardly ever miss checking the Connection Finder here on WikiTree the day it updates!

Answer 2

I have viewed myself as an artist with better than average talent, but not really anything special because I have lacked creativity. Feeling that I needed to get into genealogy, because my family biographies would be lost with me—has given me much more self esteem, something that I often have lacked. Being a part of WikiTree has been an amazing accomplishment for me.

Answer 3

I grew up in San Diego, California , my Father was born in West Virginia, but raised in Ohio, his ancestors had migrated to Ohio from Pennsylvania , most of them,

my mother's family is mostly from Tennessee, they had came from various locations some from the North East some from the Carolina's

As I have been finding new information as I have been digging deeper I have been amazed how my ancestors went thru and lived thru difficult times, so yes it did change a view of myself , as I found how my ancestors had lived , and survived ,

I also found out because a family member bought my oldest daughter the 23 and me DNA full kit , and found out what Maternal  Haplogroup I am in that was unexpected find , K1a1b1 was not expecting that at all,

and finding Wiki Tree and finding out even more about my family history has been adventure , I have found cousins, which I think meeting new relatives and finding out more about your family connections changes how you think about ones self .

Answer 4

Yes, it definitely did.
Through family research, I have learned that I am only a small wheel in a long story and that one must not take oneself so seriously. Above all, when you research how your ancestors lived and under what hardships they earned their living and how they were exposed to disease and war, then you think about how well things are today and what luxury problems you have in contrast to the past. I have never had to fight not to starve and also the Corona pandemic with today's possibilities is only a trifle with pandemics like plague and other diseases, where in past centuries often more than 1/3 of the population were killed.

Comments

Excellent, Dieter. Huge portions of the world have gone beyond what our ancestors endured but there are still many places that are currently suffering.  And we see it.  That is new. The speed and detail of communication globally.

Answer 5

Absolutely it has changed me!  It's made me even prouder to have ancestors who've done such amazing things and have endured so many hardships.  My Grampa John alone makes me prouder.  He served in WWII in the Pacific Theater at Iwo Jima.  He signed up for the Navy as a 29 year old with a wife and two kids at home because he wanted to serve our country.  Gramps said that the only things harder to experience in his life other than war was the death of his granddaughter at the age of 28.  From the day he returned home in 1946 to the day he died in 2001, he flew the American flag in honor of all the boys and men we lost in WWII.  I am proud to be the granddaughter of a WWII Navy Vet!!!

Answer 6

It is humbling to see so many stories of my own ancestors, who have lived full lives before my time, and yet had no idea that I was going to be in their future. And I probably don't actually think about it enough, but it makes you realize, how important your own task is, in building for a future for my family. Problem is, the number of people today viciously fighting against us having a future.

Answer 7

Sure enough! I learned from reading the census, that my grandfather only had 4 years of education. My father went all the way through highschool and I am the first in the family to have a university education.

My ancestry is all over the place. There a Greeks, Turks, German, Lithuanian, Russian, Romanian, English and Irish ancestors and I haven't even been digging deep!

Answer 8

I have always been a student of history (thanks, Grandpa!), so what my research has done is to root me in events and movements of things past. When I read history now, I keep my ancestors in mind: would they have been involved, how would this event/movement have affected them, etc? 

I have become particularly keen on how economics would  have dictated the work, social life, and migrations. 

I see myself as someone whose life has been impacted by things so long ago. These connect me to them so that they are not just people who lived long ago, but my people whose lives and decisions affect me even today.

Comments

Wow!  That’s exactly what I would have said, only you said it more eloquently!

This answer is deserves to be a “best answer.”  (But I don’t want to take it away from anyone else!)

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Thanks, Bartley!

Answer 9

Since I began my family research journey quite young, it has been part of my thoughts for many decades. Early on, I learned that I am not just "me"; there are so many who contributed to who I am.

Through more in depth research I learned about those ancestors, who they were, the life and times that shaped their lives and it has made me appreciate even more their sacrifices and how fortunate I am. Now, I hope to leave their legacies for future generations to learn from and appreciate.

Comments

Thank you so much, Ann, for the Best Answer star! I feel very honored to receive an answer star for a question of this nature.

Answer 10

Definitely, it has opened up so many reasons why I have persisted in the hard times in my life.  I see a pattern of strong willed women and fighters to keep going regardless of the circumstances around me.

Teresa Langford

USAF VIETNAM ERA VETERAN

Answer 11

My parents taught me that I was half Norwegian, a quarter German, and a quarter Scottish. This was their understanding of their ancestry and it was easy to remember. However, first of all my Norwegian research revealed that my father's grandmother had an ancestor from Sweden and a longer-ago one from Finland; when we began to DNA test, swarms of Finnish matches led to learning that my great-grandmother was actually from a minority group called the Forest Finns who settled in southern Norway and Sweden several hundred years ago. (I don't yet know to what extent her ancestry was Forest Finn, but clearly quite a bit.) Later on, DNA helped us identify my mother's grandfather as not Scottish like her grandmother, but the son of German immigrants. It was also a surprise to learn that my father's Germans from Poland tended to be shepherds rather than farmers and carpenters like everyone else in the tree. None of this fundamentally changed my view of myself, but it has all added depth to my understanding of what went into making me who I am.

Answer 12

It’s affected my sense of time. Long ago doesn’t seem that far in the past when it’s only a few generations.

Comments

I have thought of this also. I have a photo of my GGgrandmother (b1843) holding my mother as a baby with my grandmother standing at her side. That's over a century of living memory in one photo. Suddenly two hundred years does not seem so long ago.

Answer 13

My research on my ancestors made me realize how well I am, my grandparents lived in a very small house, two rooms and an attic with their 16 children, grandfather had to work 6 days a week to earn his living, and their children had to go to work after primary school to help their parents, and I have found that many of my ancestors' children died very young because of the poor conditions in which they lived.

Answer 14

A big change researching family history has made in me, is that now I avidly read histories of my home state, Alabama, and North American History. My understanding of the dynamics of the changing American Landscape, social, natural, geographical ( there are a LOT of big dam projects in Alabama ) and political. I am a much better educated person than I was before I started doing genealogy.

Answer 15

Yes. It has made me realize how far that I have come in my life, especially when I look at my life as the latest part of a continuum from my ancestors.

However, it also makes me really understand that any kind of progress is a life choice. It is up to the individual to want to make progress, and that unfortunately, one can choose to throw away that gift.

Answer 16

Several people have mentioned the words “continuum” and “perspective.” I agree that even with my rudimentary genealogy research, knowledge about my ancestors, both distant and near, has enhanced my peace of mind as I enter the likely final decades of life. Aren’t our connections amazing? History isn’t about memorizing dates and battles and artificial boundaries. It’s about real people and universal experiences from generation to generation, regardless of occupation or fame. We touch one another in ways we’ll never know.

Answer 17

I find myself amazed at the extent of our mutual connections.  My view of family is so much broader than it was.

Answer 18

Like several others, having done family history research has given me a sense of "rootedness" I didn't have before.  I had no idea I had so many early colonial American ancestors, for example.

And like some others, it has given me a different perspective on history, as I see so many individuals who don't always fit traditional, popular depictions of the past, and also have learned just how complicated "the past" actually was.

Answer 19

Sometimes people are judged very harshly at the end of their lives for how things have turned out for them. Take my great grandfather, for example. He was a “drunk”, unable to provide the basic necessities for his large family. His wife had to prostitute herself out in order to have any grocery money. His children were embarrassed repeatedly by their friends’ stories of seeing their father picked up out of the gutter and needing to be taken home. My great grandfather did not show or express love to his wife or children in any manner that was deemed appropriate by them. His children despised him and fled their home as soon as possible, often straight into their own marriages which frequently failed or were disfunctional in significant ways. I have never heard a positive story or good words about my great grandfather.

But when I researched this man’s side of my family tree, I learned several VERY important things about him. 1) 2 weeks before he was born, his next 2 youngest siblings died, just 2 days apart; 2) his mother died when he was just 6 months old; 3) in 1900, when he was 6 years old, he was living with a family that was not “his” family (basically being raised in a foster family), and his father was working as their servant, while still supporting his eldest son. These discoveries helped to show me possible explanations for why he became a severe alcoholic and was not able to provide for his family’s basic needs. And rather than continue to criticize the man he became, I have learned to see him through sympathetic eyes, extending grace toward him and helping other members of our family see the hardships he was up against that helped to steer him onto his destructive path.

I do not completely justify the path my great grandfather chose. But by looking into his past, I can better understand the challenges he faced which might have pushed him in his life direction. By learning to extend grace to others, I see that is is possible to forgive myself for any stupid things I have done. I can look at my life more objectively and see what circumstances might have made making better choices challenging for me. And unlike my great grandfather, I can learn from this evaluation and make better choices for my future.

Answer 20

I grew up in Central Africa, a British Colony. It took years before it dawned on me that both parents had come through the huge turmoil of WW2. And maybe that's why they didn't talk much about their early lives.

And now I know that their grandparents also faced turmoil and pain. And so it goes on. I have an ancestor who joined up as a teenager and served in the Iberian peninsula war.

And through DNA I learned that there is not really any purity of race or surname!