Generally, the book (and associated series) Roots is seen as the catalyst for the modern fascination in family history, and there’s no disputing that it inspired many people, especially those of African descent, but dig through any local library (or sometimes even your own extended family papers), and you'll find the fascination in family history dates much further back. When I started my own research back in 2002, I quickly made contact with a distant relative who had a significant body of work carried out in the 1930s. If you find something such as this, you don't just have a helping hand to start you off (remember, they didn't have the luxury of census returns and often made a few mistakes), but you have a window into the lives of their family elders who helped them in their research.
This information provided stories told by a man born in 1860, who remembered his grandparents born in the 1790s (my great, great, great grandparents) and the stories they told him before their deaths in 1869 and 1870. This gave us an insight into their lives no amount of census returns, church records or wills could offer, and I will always be grateful to the man who decided to research my family 80 years ago - and of course his daughter in law who shared it with me.
Another ancestor had a brother who kept a diary for a few years from 1849, recording the family events and pieces of news that touched their lives at the time. In my research, I found this man's descendant, who generously sent me a copy.
Wherever possible, your journey should start at home. You should find out what your family members know. What little anecdotes have circulated the older generations (even the ones no-one really believed) - the most outlandish often have a grain of truth (even if they've been embellished a little over the years). My partner's uncle was laughed at all his life for claiming they were descended from royalty - it turned out to be absolutely true!
Ideally, record conversations with everyone who knew people and places you didn't. Not only will your parents and grandparents and their siblings have experiences from their own lifetime that will fill out the details of the recent family history, but they may also have the stories told to them by their grandparents, who may have been born in the mid 19th century.
When you discover that your grandfather’s grandfather was the son of a man who was born in the 1790s, you realise how recent, and how closely linked, you are to the people and times you once thought of as far distant.
Another wonderful and absorbing early task is to trawl through every old photograph and document you can lay your hands on. Ask other branches of the family what they have in the attic, especially the descendants of any eldest children (especially eldest sons), or those who remained in the original family home or business. If your family doesn’t have much in the way of archives, think logically about which members of the family would have been most likely to have retained these items. Once family archives pass to another generation, they often become much more valued than they were by the original owner. A postcard might have survived by chance by the individual who received it, but once they’re gone, their children and grandchildren regard these to be irreplaceable mementos of their lives, and they become valuable keepsakes.
If a grandparent had elder siblings or a sibling who lived with their parents at the end of their lives, this is probably the person who took guardianship of the family documents. Try to find out from the people still around who their children were and see if you can track them down and ask for copies.
You may not be able to identify every photograph in the early stages, but as you dig deeper and make more contacts with distant family members, you may be able to start putting names to faces.
If you’re lucky, a family bible still exists. In the 18th and 19th century, couples were often given one as a wedding gift and in the front, or between the testaments, there would be a few pages for them to record their marriage and the births, marriages and deaths of the immediate family. Often three or four generations will be recorded here, sometimes with additional information you would struggle to obtain elsewhere.
So your starting tasks are to speak to as many other family members as you can. Make records of every piece of information they share, you never know when that seemingly irrelevant item might just help you fit a piece into the puzzle.
Root out any old documents you can lay your hands on, and try to trace any others that might be out there.
Then summarise what you know, and keep any information or names you can't yet place - they will probably soon make sense.
The next step will be turning to the online resources... don't expect this hobby to run its course in a few weeks
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