I’m amazed I’ve solved most of my family mysteries, some so solid I once decided they were set in stone rather than brick. DNA smashed two, sheer luck demolished another, and kind contacts helped me knock down more. I may be untidy in my daily life (I prefer to say collector or curator) but genealogically, I detest loose ends and, believe me, I can find them when many another would settle for just poking them back into their ring binder. I’m a Gradgrind for facts. They usually lead to stories in my experience.
Inevitably, as a lifelong family historian, I’ve been accused, by the mean and unimaginative, of thinking more of the dead than the living. After a career working with people in library, school, studio and evening class, and a family life full of children, grandchildren, and elderly parents, this patently isn’t true. I take it with a pinch of salt.
If no one takes time to understand the past, then empathy will fade, and the living will make every mistake all over again. Never has this been more evident than the bewildering present in which we find ourselves at this time in history.
Family history makes us obsessive I’ll admit. (Though I prefer to call it focussed.) If facts are what we hang our story on, then I need all of them. A bit Joe Friday you might say, although