zaph8000.com

It’s big business these days as more & more people get into researching the old family trees, for some it’s a gentle hobby that takes the place of more mundane hobbies for others it’s a quest to find their most famous relative. I suppose the bragging rights get a tad heated at times, it’s not a game that comes without risk though, I mean, even the dodgiest of folks have kin right? It may be a bit of a laugh finding out that a distant relation a few hundred years ago was a bit naughty but what if you find a more recent example? Families are funny things & more than a few of them have branches that are unknown to the majority of members due to ancient feuds. It may be a pastime that conjures up images of dusty documents but even the electoral rolls can throw up the odd shock if you don’t know about Aunt Marge & the milkman.

This kind of thing happens all too often & for many reasons, it may be a result to discover a great great whatever from the 1800s but the last century is the one to really worry about, given that huge misconceptions ruled until the 60′s in some cases & the prejudices of the times went on longer people could easily vanish. Not only that but the emigration during both the wars & the encouraged displacements of the 70′s haven’t helped, we may have complete confidence that we know everyone living now that we’re related to but I’d put money that we don’t. It’s like a strange version of blind date except that it’s too easy to think that we know the occupants of the graves that we find simply because we share some genetic material, it’s even more of a blind date when those we find are living, no-one ever claimed that we’re destined to get on with all of our family. It’s not just that either, simply doing your family tree can cause disruptions within the family you know & love ( or put up with ), not everyone wants the past dug up & are more than happy to let yesterdays’ scandals remain undiscovered. Even worse than this though is that although finding a distant kinship between ourselves & some unsavory characters may be a trifle daunting & may put us off finding no-one of interest is far worse.

Imagine it, you do the research, you put the hours in & you’ve bored everyone you know to tears about your pet project & it turns out that you’ve got nothing but chartered accountants stretching back throughout time, none of them even died of the plague, nothing. No highwaymen, no Bishops, no outlaws, not even an embezzler to bring up at dinner parties, just dull number crunchers who did nothing but crunch numbers, if you find this & you’re a number cruncher yourself then show your kids, it’s all you can do. The fact is that you can only go back so far anyway & whilst it might be nice to have a leather bound volume of your particular family tree it’s only really worth doing if there’s the slightest chance that a few saints & scoundrels have shown up. Otherwise it’s just a big list of mostly dead folk & a walk around the cemetery would be more fun than reading that, most peoples’ lives aren’t all that interesting, after a few generations only the mad & the bad have any chance of standing out & there aren’t as many of them as you’d think. I’m not against people doing their family trees for a bit of a laugh, it’s the ones that take it all seriously that get on my nerves, they start wandering around graveyards laying flowers on the tombstones of folk they’ve never met & that’s just daft. It’s nice to be remembered after we’ve gone but if you’ve never known the person who’s dead whilst they were alive what the hell can you claim to be remembering? On top of that they dream up imaginary connections as well such as the fact that two hundred years ago a relative being in the merchant navy explains why they like fish so much! It can get beyond sad if you let it, that’s all I’m saying, that & the fact that the human race is descended from so few ancestors that we’re all related one way or another, by all means do the trees but if you want to do something useful, try planting a few.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.