Am I Related to You?

Family is one of the most important aspects of many peoples' lives. To understand the struggles of the past that have shaped your family tree whether rich or poor, hero or heavy is the truth of history. When one starts to look into the past for answers to stories, oral histories and written history passed from great grandparents through generations, they must be prepared to be shocked, amused, or pleased to learn of the oddities and peculiarities of their ancestors' lives.

Sometimes, those past lives may have pointed your family to the legacy of work in which your chosen occupation is deeply seated. Maybe you had relatives with long illustrious careers in the military and now the mantle has passed to you, maybe you are of foreign heritage or Native American ancestry. Learning from genealogy research is thrilling and can make one proud to speak of the contributions to which you can directly link your past. President Jimmy Carter said of his roots, “We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business.”

Genealogy research is vital because finding essential information that may have been lost or forgotten is a reward in itself or finding where your ancestors hailed from might explain why you have certain traits or appearances. As significant as finding all that information is, preserving it and compiling it in a useful framework is even more rewarding, because it can give future generations a place to look for critical data as well as reference points to help relatives research other branches of your family tree.